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William Lukens Shoemaker 



ilrtcr^itic <Stiition 



LECTURES AND BIOGRAPHICAL 
SKETCHES 

BEING VOLUME X. 

OF 

EMERSON'S COMPLETE WORKS 



LECTURES 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 



BY 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 




BOSTON 

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 

New York: 11 East Seventeenth Street 

(C6e fiiterjsibe l^te^^, €axttbuttQZ 
189 1 







Copyright, 1883, 
Bt EDWARD W. EMERSON. 

All rights reserved. 

Olft 
W. L. Shoemaker 
'7 S '06 



The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A. 
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Iloughton & Company. 



NOTE. 



Of the pieces included in this volume the fol- 
lowing, namely, those from the " Dial," " Charac- 
ter," " Plutarch," and the biographical sketches of 
Dr. Kipley, of Mr. Hoar, and of Henry Thoreau, 
were printed by Mr. Emerson before I took any 
part in the arrangement of his papers. The rest, 
except the sketch of Miss Mary Emerson, I got 
ready for his use in readings to his friends or to a 
limited public. He had given up the regular prac- 
tice of lecturing, but would sometimes, upon special 
request, read a paper that had been prepared for 
him from his manuscripts, in the manner described 
in the preface to " Letters and Social Aims," — 
some former lecture serving as a nucleus for the 
new. Some of these papers he afterwards allowed 
to be printed ; others, namely, " Aristocracy," " Ed- 
ucation," " The Man of Letters," " The Scholar," 
" Historic Notes of Life and Letters in New Eng- 
land," " Mary Moody Emerson," are now pub- 
lished for the first time. 

J. E. CABOT. 



CONTENTS. 



PAEO 

Demonologt 7 

Aristocracy . . . . , 33 

Perpetual Forces . . ...... 69 

Character 91 

Education 123 

The Superlative 157 

The Sovereignty of Ethics 175 

The Preacher 207 

The Man of Letters 229 

The Scholar 247 

Plutarch 275 

Historic Notes of Life and Letters in New Eng- 
land 305 

The Chardon Street Convention. . . . . 349 

Ezra Ripley, D. D 355 

Mary Moody Emerson 371 

Samuel Hoar 405 

Thoreau . , , o 419 

Carlyle 453 



DEMONOLOGY. 



Night-dreams trace on Memory's wall 
Shadows of the thoughts of day, 

And thy fortunes as they fall 
The bias of thy will betray. 



In the chamber, on the stairs, 

Lurkmg dumb, 

Go and come 
Lemurs and Lars. 



DEMONOLOGY.i 



The name Demonology covers dreams, omens, 
coincidences, luck, sortilege, magic, and other ex- 
periences which shun rather than court inquiry, and 
deserve notice chiefly because every man has usually 
in a lifetime two or three hints in this kind which 
are specially impressive to him. They also shed 
light on our structure. 

The witchcraft of sleep divides with truth the 
empire of our lives. This soft enchantress visits 
two children lying locked in each other's arms, and 
carries them asunder by wide spaces of land and 
sea, and wide intervals of time : — 

" There lies a sleeping city, God of dreams ! 
What an unreal and fantastic world 
Is going on below ! 

Within the sweep of yon encircling wall 
How many a large creation of the night, 
Wide wilderness and mountain, rock and sea, 
Peopled with busy, transitory groups. 
Finds room to rise, and never feels the crowd." 

^ From the course of lectures on " Human Life," read in 
Boston, 1839-40. Published in the North American Review, 
1877. 



10 DEMONOLOGY. 

'T is superfluous to think of the dreams of multi- 
tudes, the astonishment remains that one should 
dream ; that we should resign so quietly this deify- 
ing Reason, and become the theatre of delirious 
shows, wherein time, space, persons, cities, animals, 
should dance before us in merry and mad confu- 
sion ; a delicate creation outdoing the prime and 
flower of actual nature, antic comedy alternating 
with horrid pictures. Sometimes the forgotten 
companions of childhood reappear : — 

" They come, in dim procession led, 
The cold, the faithless, and the dead, 
As warm each hand, each brow as gay, 
As if they parted yesterday: " — 

or we seem busied for hours and days in peregrina- 
tions over seas and lands, in earnest dialogues, 
strenuous actions for nothings and absurdities, 
cheated by spectral jokes and waking suddenly 
with ghastly laughter, to be rebuked by the cold, 
lonely, silent midnight, and to rake with confusion 
in memory among the gibbering nonsense to find 
the motive of this contemptible cachinnation. 
Dreams are jealous of being remembered ; they 
dissipate instantly and angrily if you try to hold 
them. When newly awaked from lively dreams, 
we are so near them, still agitated by them, still in 
their sphere, — give us one syllable, one feature, 
one hint, and we should repossess the whole ; hours 



DEMONOLOGY, 11 

of this strange entertainment would come trooping 
back to us ; but we cannot get our hand on the 
first link or fibre, and the whole is lost. There is 
a strange wilfulness in the speed with which it dis- 
perses and baffles our grasp. 

A dislocation seems to be the foremost trait of 
dreams. A painful imperfection almost always at- 
tends them. The fairest forms, the most noble and 
excellent persons, are deformed by some pitiful and 
insane circumstance. The very landscape and scen- 
ery in a dream seem not to fit us, but like a coat 
or cloak of some other person to overlap and en- 
cumber the wearer ; so is the ground, the road, the 
house, in dreams, too long or too short, and if it 
served no other purpose would show us how accu- 
rately nature fits man awake. 

There is one memory of waking and another of 
sleep. In our dreams the same scenes and fancies 
are many times associated, and that too, it would 
seem, for years. In sleep one shall travel certain 
roads in stage-coaches or gigs, which he recognizes 
as familiar, and has dreamed that ride a dozen 
times ; or shall walk alone in familiar fields and 
meadows, which road or which meadow in waking 
hours he never looked upon. This feature of 
dreams deserves the more attention from its singu- 
lar resemblance to that obscure yet startling expe^ 
rience which almost every person confesses in day. 



12 DEMONOLOGY. 

light, that particular passages of conversation and 
action have occurred to him in the same order be- 
fore, whether dreaming or waking ; a suspicion 
that they have been with precisely these persons in 
precisely this room, and heard precisely this dia- 
logue, at some former hour, they know not when. 

Animals have been called " the dreams of na- 
ture." Perhaps for a conception of their con- 
sciousness we may go to our own dreams. In a 
dream we have the instinctive obedience, the same 
torpidity of the highest power, the same unsur- 
prised assent to the monstrous as these metamor- 
phosed men exhibit. Our thoughts in a stable or 
in a menagerie, on the other hand, may well re- 
mind us of our dreams. What compassion do 
these imprisoning forms awaken ! You may catch 
the glance of a dog sometimes which lays a kind 
of claim to sympathy and brotherhood. What ! 
somewhat of me down there ? Does he know it ? 
Can he too, as I, go out of himself, see himself, 
perceive relations? We fear lest the poor brute 
should gain one dreadful glimpse of his condition, 
should learn in some moment the tough limitations 
of this fettering organization. It was in this 
glance that Ovid got the hint of his metamor- 
phoses ; Calidasa of his transmigration of souls. 
For these fables are our own thoughts carried out. 
What keeps those wild tales in circulation for 



DEMONOLOGY. 13 

thousands of years ? What but the wild fact to 
which they suggest some approximation of theory ? 
Nor is the fact quite solitary, for in varieties of our 
own species where organization seems to predom- 
inate over the genius of man, in Kalmuck or Malay 
or Flathead Indian, we are sometimes pained by 
the same feeling ; and sometimes too the sharp- 
witted prosperous white man awakens it. In a 
mixed assembly we have chanced to see not only a 
glance of Abdiel, so grand and keen, but also in 
other faces the features of the mink, of the bull, of 
the rat, and the barn-door fowl. You think, could 
the man overlook his own condition, he could not 
be restrained from suicide. 

Dreams have a poetic integrity and truth. This 
limbo and dust-hole of thought is presided over by 
a certain reason, too. Their extravagance from 
nature is yet within a higher nature. They seem 
to us to suggest an abundance and fluency of 
thought not familiar to the waking experience. 
They pique us by independence of us, yet we know 
ourselves in this mad crowd, and owe to dreams a 
kind of divination and wisdom. My dreams are 
not me ; they are not Nature, or the Not-me : they 
are both. They have a double consciousness, at 
once sub- and ob-jective. We call the phantoms 
that rise, the creation of our fancy, but they act 
ike mutineers, and fire on their commander ; show- 



14 DEMON OLOGY. 

ing that every act, every thought, every cause, is bi- 
polar, and in the act is contained the counteraction. 
If I strike, I am struck ; if I chase, I am pursued. 

Wise and sometimes terrible hints shall in them 
be thrown to the man out of a quite unknown intel- 
ligence. He shall be startled two or three times in 
his life by the justice as well as the significance of 
this phantasmagoria. Once or twice the conscious 
fetters shall seem to be unlocked, and a freer utter- 
ance attained. A prophetic character in all ages 
has haunted them. They are the maturation often 
of opinions not consciously carried out to statements, 
but whereof we already possessed the elements. 
Thus, when awake, I know the character of Rupert, 
but do not think what he may do. In dreams I see 
him engaged in certain actions which seem prepos- 
terous, — out of aU fitness. He is hostile, he is 
cruel, he is frightful, he is a poltroon. It turns out 
prophecy a year later. But it was already in my 
mind as character, and the sibyl dreams merely 
embodied it in fact. Why then should not symp- 
toms, auguries, forebodings be, and, as one said, 
the moanings of the spirit ? 

We are let by this experience into the high 
region of Cause, and acquainted with the identity 
of very unlike-seeming effects. We learn that ac- 
tions whose turpitude is very differently reputed 
proceed from one and the same affection. Sleep 



DEMONOLOGY. 15 

takes off the costume of circumstance, arms us with 
terrible freedom, so that every will rushes to a 
deed. A skilful man reads his dreams for his self- 
knowledge ; yet not the details, but the quality. 
What part does he play in them, — a cheerful, 
manly part, or a poor drivelling part ? However 
monstrous and grotesque their apparitions, they 
have a substantial truth. The same remark may 
be extended to the omens and coincidences which 
may have astonished us. Of all it is true that 
the reason of them is always latent in the individual. 
Goethe said : " These whimsical pictures, inasmuch 
as they originate from us, may well have an anal- 
ogy with our whole life and fate." 

The soul contains in itself the event that shall 
presently befall it, for the event is only the actual- 
izing of its thoughts. It is no wonder that partic- 
ular dreams and presentiments should fall out and 
be prophetic. The fallacy consists in selecting a 
few insignificant hints when all are inspired with 
the same sense. As if one should exhaust his aston- 
ishment at the economy of his thumb-nail, and over- 
look the central causal miracle of his being a man. 
Every man goes through the world attended with 
innumerable facts prefiguring (yes, distinctly an- 
nouncing) his fate, if only eyes of sufficient heed 
and illumination were fastened on the sign. The 
gign is always there, if only the eye were also ; just 



16 DEMONOLOGY. 

as under every tree in the speckled sunshine and 
shade no man notices that every spot of light is a 
perfect image of the sun, until in some hour the 
moon eclipses the luminary ; and then first we notice 
that the spots of light have become crescents, or 
annular, and correspond to the changed figure of 
the sun. Things are significant enough. Heaven 
knows ; but the seer of the sign, — where is he ? 
We doubt not a man's fortune may be read in the 
lines of his hand, by palmistry ; in the lines of his 
face, by physiognomy ; in the outlines of the skull, 
by craniology : the lines are all there, but the 
reader waits. The long waves indicate to the in- 
structed mariner that there is no near land in the 
direction from which they come. Belzoni describes 
the three marks which led him to dig for a door to 
the pyramid of Ghizeh. What thousands had be- 
held the same spot for so many ages, and seen no 
three marks ! 

Secret analogies tie together the remotest parts 
of nature, as the atmosphere of a summer morning 
is filled with innumerable gossamer threads run- 
ning in every direction, revealed by the beams of 
the rising sun. All life, all creation, is tell-tale 
and betraying. A man reveals himself in every 
glance and step and movement and rest : — 

" Head with foot hath private amity, 
And both with moons and tides." 



DEMONOLOGY. 17 

Not a mathematical axiom but is a moral rule. 
The jest and byword to an intelligent ear extends 
its meaning to the soul and to all time. Indeed, all 
productions of man are so anthropomorphous that 
not possibly can he invent any fable that shall not 
have a deep moral and be true in senses and to an 
extent never intended by the inventor. Thus all 
the bravest tales of Homer and the poets, modern 
philosophers can explain with profound judgment 
of law and state and ethics. Lucian has an idle 
tale that Pancrates, journeying from Memphis to 
Coppus, and wanting a servant, took a door-bar 
and pronounced over it magical words, and it stood 
up and brought him water, and turned a spit, and 
carried bundles, doing all the work of a slave. 
What is this but a prophecy of the progress of art ? 
For Pancrates write Watt or Fulton, and for 
"magical words " write " steam ;" and do they not 
make an iron bar and half a dozen wheels do the 
work, not of on^, but of a thousand skilful me- 
chanics ? 

" Nature," said Swedenborg, " makes almost as 
much demand on our faith as miracles do." And 
I find nothing in fables more astonishing than my 
experience in every hour. One moment of a man's 
life is a fact so stupendous as to take the lustre out 
of all fiction. The lovers of marvels, of what we 
call the occult and unproved sciences, of mesmer- 



18 DEMONOLOGY. 

ism, of astrology, of coincidences, of intercourse, 
by writing or by rapping or by painting, with de- 
parted spirits, need not reproach us with incredu- 
lity because we are slow to accept their statement. 
It is not the incredibility of the fact, but a certain 
want of harmony between the action and the agents. 
We are used to vaster wonders than these that are 
alleged. In the hands of poets, of devout and sim- 
ple minds, nothing in the line of their character 
and genius would surprise us. But we should look 
for the style of the great artist in it, look for com- 
pleteness and harmony. Nature never works like 
a conjuror, to surprise, rarely by shocks, but by 
infinite graduation ; so that we live embosomed in 
sounds we do not hear, scents we do not smell, spec- 
tacles we see not, and by innumerable impressions 
so softly laid on that though important we do not 
discover them until our attention is called to them. 
For Spiritism, it shows that no man almost is fit 
to give evidence. Then I say to the amiable and 
sincere among them, these matters are quite too im- 
portant than that I can rest them on any legends. 
If I have no facts, as you allege, I can very weU 
wait for them. I am content and occupied with 
such miracles as I know, such as my eyes and ears 
daily show me, such as humanity and astronomy. 
If any others are important to me they wiU cep 
tainly be shown to me. 



DEMONOLOGY. 19 

In times most credulous of these fancies the sense 
was always met and the superstition rebuked by the 
grave spirit of reason and humanity. When Hec- 
tor is told that the omens are unpropitious, he re- 
plies, — 

" One omen is the best, to fight for one's country." 

Euripides said, " He is not the best prophet who 
guesses well, and he is not the wisest man whose 
guess turns out well in the event, but he who, what- 
ever the event be, takes reason and probability for 
his guide." '' Swans, horses, dogs and dragons," 
says Plutarch, " we distinguish as sacred, and vehi- 
cles of the Divine foresight, and yet we cannot be- 
lieve that men are sacred and favorites of Heaven." 
The poor shipmaster discovered a sound theology, 
when in the storm at sea he made his prayer to 
Neptune, "O God, thou mayst save me if thou 
wilt, and if thou wilt thou mayst destroy me ; but, 
however, I will hold my rudder true." Let me add 
one more example of the same good sense, in a 
story quoted out of Hecateus of Abdera : — 

" As I was once travelling by the Red Sea, there was 
one among the horsemen that attended us named Masol- 
1am, a brave and strong man, and according to the tes- 
timony of all the Greeks and barbarians, a very skilful 
archer. Now while the whole multitude was on the 
way, an augur called out to them to stand still, and this 
man inquired the reason of their halting. The augur 



20 DEMON OLOGY. 

showed him a bird, and told him, ' If that bird remained 
where he was, it would be better for them all to remain ; 
if he flew on, they might proceed ; but if he flew back 
they must return.' The Jew said nothing, but bent his 
bow and shot the bird to the ground. This act offended 
the augur and some others, and they began to utter im- 
precations against the Jew. But he replied, * Where- 
fore ? Why are you so foolish as to take care of this 
unfortunate bird? How could this fowl give us any 
wise directions respecting our journey, when he could 
not save his own life ? Had he known anything of fu- 
turity, he would not have come here to be killed by the 
arrow of Masollam the Jew.' " 

It is not the tendency of our times to ascribe im- 
portance to whimsical pictures of sleep, or to 
omens. But the faith in peculiar and alien power 
takes another form in the modern mind, much more 
resembling the ancient doctrine of the guardian 
genius. The belief that particular individuals are 
attended by a good fortune which makes them de- 
sirable associates in any enterprise of uncertain 
success, exists not only among those who take part 
in political and military projects, but influences all 
joint action of commerce and affairs, and a cor- 
responding assurance in the individuals so dis- 
tinguished meets and justifies the expectation of 
others by a boundless self-trust. *' I have a lucky 
hand, sir," said Napoleon to his hesitating Chan^ 



DEMONOLOGY. 21 

cellor; "those on whom I lay it are fit for any- 
thing." This faith is familiar in one form, — that 
often a certain abdication of prudence and foresight 
is an element of success ; that children and young 
persons come off safe from casualties that would 
have proved dangerous to wiser people. We do 
not think the young will be forsaken ; but he is 
fast approaching the age when the sub-miraculous 
external protection and leading are withdrawn and 
he is committed to his own care. The young man 
takes a leap in the dark and alights safe. As he 
comes into manhood he remembers passages and 
persons that seem, as he looks at them now, to 
have been supernaturally deprived of injurious in- 
fluence on him. His eyes were holden that he 
could not see. But he learns that such risks he 
may no longer run. He observes, with pain, not 
that he incurs mishaps here and there, but that his 
genius, whose invisible benevolence was tower and 
shield to him, is no longer present and active. 

In the popular belief, ghosts are a selecting tribe, 
avoiding millions, speaking to one. In our tradi- 
tions, fairies, angels and saints show the like favor- 
itism; so do the agents and the means of magic, 
as sorcerers and amulets. This faith in a doting 
power, so easily sliding into the current belief 
everywhere, and, in the particular of lucky days 
and fortunate persons, as frequent in America to- 



22 DEMONOLOGY. 

day as the f aitli in incantations and philters was in 
old Rome, or the wholesome potency of the sign of 
the cross in modern Rome, — this supposed power 
rmis athwart the recognized agencies, natural and 
moral, which science and religion explore. Heeded 
though it be in many actions and partnerships, it 
is not the power to which we build churches, or 
make liturgies and prayers, or which we regard in 
passing laws, or found college professorships to ex- 
pound. Goethe has said in his Autobiography 
what is much to the purpose : — 

" I beheved that I discovered in nature, animate and 
inanimate, intelligent and brute, somewhat which mani- 
fested itself only in contradiction, and therefore could 
not be grasped by a conception, much less by a word. 
It was not god-like, since it seemed unreasonable ; not 
human, since it had no understanding; not devihsh, 
since it was beneficent ; not angelic, since it is often a 
marplot. It resembled chance, since it showed no se- 
quel. It resembled Providence, since it pointed at con- 
nection. All which limits us seemed permeable to that. 
It seemed to deal at pleasure with the necessary ele- 
ments of our constitution ; it shortened time and ex- 
tended space. Only in the impossible it seemed to de- 
light, and the possible to repel with contempt. This, 
which seemed to insert itself between all other things, 
to sever them, to bind them, I named the Demoniacal, 
after the example of the ancients, and of those who had 
observed the like. 



DEMONOLOGY. 23 

" Although every demoniacal property can manifest 
itself in the corporeal and incorporeal, yes, in beasts too 
in a remarkable manner, yet it stands specially in won- 
derful relations with men, and forms in the moral world, 
though not an antagonist, yet a transverse element, so 
that the former may be called the warp, the latter the 
woof. For the phenomena which hence originate there 
are countless names, since all philosophies and religions 
have attempted in prose or in poetry to solve this riddle, 
and to settle the thing once for all, as indeed they may 
be allowed to do. 

"But this demonic element appears most fruitful 
when it shows itself as the determining characteristic in 
an individual. In the course of my life I have been 
able to observe several such, some near, some farther 
off. They are not always superior persons, either m 
mind or in talent. They seldom recommend themselves 
through goodness of heart. But a monstrous force goes 
out from them, and they exert an incredible power over 
all creatures, and even over the elements ; who shall say 
how far such an influence may extend ? All united 
moral powers avail nothing against them. In vain do 
the clear-headed part of mankind discredit them as de- 
ceivers or deceived, — the mass is attracted. Seldom 
or never do they meet their match among their contem- 
poraries ; they are not to be conquered save by the uni- 
verse itself, against which they have taken up arms. 
Out of such experiences doubtless arose the strange, 
monstrous proverb, ' Nobody against God but God.' " ^ 
* Goethe, Wdhrheit und Dichtung, Book xx. 



24 DEMONOLOGY. 

It would be easy in the political history of every 
time to furnish examples of this irregular success, 
men having a force which without virtue, without 
shining talent, yet makes them prevailing. No 
equal appears in the field against them. A power 
Sfoes out from them which draws all men and events 
to favor them. The crimes they commit, the ex- 
posures which follow, and which would ruin any 
other man, are strangely overlooked, or do more 
strangely turn to their account. 

I set down these things as I find them, but how- 
ever poetic these twilights of thought, I like day- 
light, and I find somewhat wilful, some play at 
blindman's-buff, when men as wise as Goethe talk 
mysteriously of the demonological. The insinua- 
tion is that the known eternal laws of morals and 
matter are sometimes corrupted or evaded by this 
gipsy principle, which chooses favorites and works 
in the dark for their behoof ; as if the laws of the 
Father of the universe were sometimes balked and 
eluded by a meddlesome Aunt of the universe for 
her pets. You will observe that this extends the 
popular idea of success to the very gods ; that they 
foster a success to you which is not a success to all ; 
that fortunate men, fortunate youths exist, whose 
good is not virtue or the public good, but a private 
good, robbed from the rest. It is a midsummer- 
madness, corrupting all who hold the tenet. The 



DEMONOLOGY. 25 

demonologic is only a fine name for egotism; an 
exaggeration namely of the individual, whom it is 
Nature's settled purpose to postpone. " There is 
one world common to all who are awake, but 
each sleeper betakes himself to one of his own." ^ 
Dreams retain the infirmities of our character. 
The good genius may be there or not, our evil 
genius is sure to stay. The Ego partial makes 
the dream ; the Ego total the interpretation. Life 
is also a dream on the same terms. 

The history of man is a series of conspiracies to 
win from Nature some advantage without paying 
for it. It is curious to see what grand powers we 
have a hint of and are mad to grasp, yet how slow 
Heaven is to trust us with such edge-tools. " All 
that frees talent without increasing self-command 
is noxious." Thus the fabled ring of Gyges, mak- 
ing the wearer invisible, which is represented in 
modern fable by the telescope as used by Schlemil, 
is simply mischievous. A new or private language, 
used to serve only low or political purposes ; the 
transfusion of the blood ; the steam battery, so fa= 
tal as to put an end to war by the threat of univer- 
sal murder ; the desired discovery of the guided bal- 
loon, are of this kind. Tramps are troublesome 
enough in the city and in the highways, but tramps 
flying through the air and descending on the lonely 
^ Heraclitus 



26 DEMON OLOGY. 

traveller or the lonely farmer's house or the bank- 
messenger in the country, can well be spared. Men 
are not fit to be trusted with these talismans. 

Before we acquire great power we must acquire 
wisdom to use it well. Animal magnetism inspires 
the prudent and moral with a certain terror ; so 
the divination of contingent events, and the alleged 
second-sight of the pseudo-spiritualists. There are 
many things of which a wise man might wish to 
be ignorant, and these are such. Shun them as 
you would the secrets of the undertaker and the 
butcher. The best are never demoniacal or mag- 
netic ; leave this limbo to the Prince of the power 
of the air. The lowest angel is better. It is the 
height of the animal ; below the region of the di- 
vine. Power as such is not known to the angels. 

Great men feel that they are so by sacrificing 
their selfishness and falling back on what is hu- 
mane ; in renouncing family, clan, country, and 
each exclusive and local connection, to beat with 
the pulse and breathe with the lungs of nations. 
A Highland chief, an Indian sachem or a feudal 
baron may fancy that the mountains and lakes were 
made specially for him Donald, or him Tecumseh ; 
that the one question for history is the pedigree of 
his house, and future ages will be busy with his 
renown ; that he has a guardian angel ; that he is 
not in the roll of common men, but obeys a high 



DEMONOLOGY. 27 

family destiny ; when he acts, unheard-of success 
evinces the presence of rare agents ; what is to be- 
fall him, omens and coincidences foreshow ; when 
he dies banshees will announce his fate to kinsmen 
in foreign parts. What more facile than to project 
this exuberant selfhood into the region where indi- 
viduality is forever bounded by generic and cosmi- 
cal laws ? The deepest flattery, and that to which 
we can never be insensible, is the flattery of omens. 
We may make great eyes if we like, and say of 
one on whom the sun shines, " What luck presides 
over him ! " But we know that the law of the 
Universe is one for each and for all. There is as 
precise and as describable a reason for every fact 
occurring to him, as for any occurring to any man. 
Every fact in which the moral elements intermingle 
is not the less under the dominion of fatal law. 
Lord Bacon uncovers the magic when he says, 
" Manifest virtues procure reputation ; occult ones, 
fortune." Thus the so-called fortunate man is one 
who, though not gifted to speak when the people 
listen, or to act with grace or with understanding 
to great ends, yet is one who, in actions of a low 
or common pitch, relies on his instincts, and simply 
does not act where he should not, but waits his 
time, and without effort acts when the need is. If 
to this you add a fitness to the society around him, 
you have the elements of fortune ; so that in a par- 



28 DEMONOLOGY. 

ticular circle and knot of affairs he is not so much 
his own man as the hand of nature and time. Just 
as his eye and hand work exactly together, — and 
to hit the mark with a stone he has only to fasten 
his eye firmly on the mark and his arm will swing 
true, — so the main ambition and genius being be- 
stowed in one direction, the lesser spirits and in- 
voluntary aids within his sphere will follow. The 
fault of most men is that they are busybodies ; do 
not wait the simple movement of the soul, but in- 
terfere and thwart the instructions of their own 
minds. 

Coincidences, dreams, animal magnetism, omens, 
sacred lots, have great interest for some minds. 
They run into this twilight and say, "There's 
more than is dreamed of in your philosophy." 
Certainly these facts are interesting, and deserve 
to be considered. But they are entitled only to 
a share of attention, and not a large share. 
Nil magnificum^ nil generosum sapit. Let their 
value as exclusive subjects of attention be judged 
of by the infallible test of the state of mind in 
which much notice of them leaves us. Read a 
page of Cudworth or of Bacon, and we are exhila- 
rated and armed to manly duties. Read demonol- 
ogy or Colquhoun's Report, and we are bewildered 
and perhaps a little besmirched. We grope. 
They who love them say they are to reveal to us a 



DEMONOLOGY. 29 

world of unknown, unsuspected truths. But sup- 
pose a diligent collection and study of these occult 
facts were made, they are merely physiological, semi- 
medical, related to the machinery of man, open- 
ing to our curiosity how we live, and no aid on the 
superior problems why we live, and what we do. 
While the dilettanti have been prying into the 
humors and muscles of the eye, simple men will 
have helped themselves and the world by vising 
their eyes. 

And this is not the least remarkable fact which 
the adepts have developed. Men who had never 
wondered at anything, who had thought it the most 
natural thing in the world that they should exist 
in this orderly and replenished world, have been 
unable to suppress their amazement at the dis- 
closures of the somnambulist. The peculiarity of 
the history of Animal Magnetism is that it drew 
in as inquirers and students a class of persons 
never on any other occasion known as students 
and inquirers. Of course the inquiry is pursued 
on low principles. Animal magnetism peeps. It 
becomes in such hands a black art. The uses of 
the thing, the commodity, the power, at once come 
to mind and direct the course of inquiry. It 
seemed to open again that door which was open 
to the imagination of childhood — of magicians 
and fairies and lamps of Aladdin, the travelling 



30 DEMONOLOGY. 

cloak, the shoes of swiftness and the sword of 
sharpness that were to satisfy the uttermost wish 
of the senses without danger or a drop of sweat 
But as Nature can never be outwitted, as in the 
Universe no man was ever known to get a cent's 
worth without paying in some form or other the 
cent, so this prodigious promiser ends always and 
always will, as sorcery and alchemy have done be- 
fore, in very small and smoky performance. 

Mesmerism is high life below stairs; Momus 
playing Jove in the kitchens of Olympus. 'Tis 
a low curiosity or lust of structure, and is sepa- 
rated by celestial diameters from the love of spir- 
itual truths. It is wholly a false view to couple 
these things in any manner with the religious na- 
ture and sentiment, and a most dangerous super- 
stition to raise them to the lofty place of motives 
and sanctions. This is to prefer halos and rain- 
bows to the sun and moon. These adepts have 
mistaken flatulency for inspiration. Were this 
drivel which they report as the voice of spirits 
really such, we must find out a more decisive sui- 
cide. I say to the table-rappers : — 

" I well believe 
Thou wilt not utter what thou dost not know, 
And so far will I trust thee, gentle Kate." 

They are ignorant of all that is healthy and 
useful to know, and by laws of kind, — dunces 



DEMONOLOGY. 31 

seeking dunces in the dark of what they call the 
spiritual world, — preferring snores and gastric 
noises to the voice of any muse. I think the 
rappings a new test, like blue litmus or other 
chemical absorbent, to try catechisms with. It 
detects organic skepticism in the very heads of the 
Church. 'Tis a lawless world. We have left the 
geometry, the compensation, and the conscience of 
the daily world, and come into the realm or chaos 
of chance and pretty or ugly confusion ; no guilt 
and no virtue, but a droll bedlam, where every- 
body believes only after his humor, and the ac- 
tors and spectators have no conscience or reflection, 
no police, no foot-rule, no sanity, — nothing but 
whim and whim creative. 

Meantime far be from rae the impatience which 
cannot brook the supernatural, the vast; far be 
from me the lust of explaining away all which 
appeals to the imagination, and the great presenti- 
ments which haunt us. Willingly I too say. Hail ! 
to the unknown awful powers which transcend 
the ken of the understanding. And the attrac- 
tion which this topic has had for me and which in- 
duces me to unfold its parts before you is precisely 
because 1 think the numberless forms in which this 
superstition has re-appeared in every time and 
every people indicates the inextinguishableness of 
wonder in man ; betrays his conviction that behind 



32 DEMONOLOGY. 

all your explanations is a vast and potent and liv- 
ing Nature, inexhaustible and sublime, which you 
cannot explain. He is sure no book, no man has 
told him all. He is sure the great Instinct, the 
circumambient soul which flows into him as into 
all, and is his life, has not been searched. He 
is sure that intimate relations subsist between his 
character and his fortunes, between him and his 
world ; and until he can adequately tell them he 
will tell them wildly and fabidously. Demonology 
is the shadow of Theology. 

The whole world is an omen and a sign. Why 
look so wistfully in a corner ? Man is the Image 
of God. Why run after a ghost or a dream? 
The voice of divination resounds everywhere and 
runs to waste unheard, unregarded, as the moun- 
tains echo with the bleatings of cattle. 



ARISTOCRACY. 



But if thou do thy best, 

Without remission, without rest, 

And invite the sunbeam. 

And abhor to feign or seem 

Even to those who thee should love 

And thy behavior approve ; 

If thou go in thine own likeness, — 

Be it health or be it sickness, — 

If thou go as thy father's son, 

If thou wear no mask or lie, 

Dealing purely and nakedly, — . , , 



AEISTOCRACYJ 



There is an attractive topic, which never goes 
out of vogue and is impertinent in no community, 
— the permanent traits of the Aristocracy. It is 
an interest of the human race, and, as I look at it, 
inevitable, sacred and to be found in every country 
and in every company of men. My concern with 
it is that concern which all well - disposed persons 
will feel, that there should be model men, — true 
instead of spurious pictures of excellence, and, if 
possible, living standards. 

I observe that the word gentleman is gladly 
heard in all companies ; that the cogent motive with 
the best young men who are revolving plans and 
forming resolutions for the future, is the spirit of 
honor, the wish to be gentlemen. They do not 
yet covet political power, nor any exuberance of 
wealth, wealth that costs too much ; nor do they 
wish to be saints ; for fear of partialism ; but the 
middle term, the reconciling element, the success of 

^ First read as a lecture — in England — in 1848 ; here 
printed with additions from other papers. 



36 ARISTOCRACY, 

the manly character, they find in the idea of gentle- 
man. It is not to be a man of rank, but a man of 
honor, accomplished in all arts and generosities, 
which seems to them the right mark and the true 
chief of our modern society. A reference to society 
is part of the idea of culture ; science of a gentle- 
man ; art of a gentleman ; poetry in a gentleman : 
intellectually held, that is, for their own sake, for 
what they are ; for their universal beauty and 
worth; — not for economy, which degrades them, 
but not over-intellectually, that is, not to ecstasy, en- 
trancing the man, but redounding to his beauty 
and glory. 

In the sketches which I have to offer I shall not 
be surprised if my readers should fancy that I am 
giving them, under a gayer title, a chapter on Edu- 
cation. It will not pain me if I am found now and 
then to rove from the accepted and historic, to a 
theoretic peerage : or if it should turn out, what is 
true, that I am describing a real aristocracy, a chap- 
ter of Templars who sit indifferently in all climates 
and under the shadow of all institutions, but so 
few, so heedless of badges, so rarely convened, so 
little in sympathy with the predominant politics of 
nations, that their names and doings are not re- 
corded in any Book of Peerage, or any Court Jour- 
nal, or even Daily Newspaper of the world. 

I find the caste in the man. The Golden Book 



ARISTOCRACY. 37 

of Venice, the scale of European chivalry, the 
Barons of England, the hierarchy of India with its 
impassable degrees, is each a transcript of the deci- 
grade or centigraded Man. A many-chambered 
Aristocracy lies already organized in his moods and 
faculties. Room is found for all the departments 
of the State in the moods and faculties of each hu- 
man spirit, with separate function and difference of 
dignity. 

The terrible aristocracy that is in nature. Real 
people dwelling with the real, face to face un- 
daunted : then, far down, people of taste, people 
dwelling in a relation, or rumor, or influence of 
good and fair, entertained by it, superficially 
touched, yet charmed by these shadows : — and, 
far below these, gross and thoughtless, the animal 
man, billows of chaos, down to the dancing and 
menial organizations, 

I observe the inextinguishable prejudice men 
have in favor of a hereditary transmission of quali- 
ties. It is in vain to remind them that Nature ap- 
pears capricious. Some qualities she carefully fixes 
and transmits, but some, and those the finer, she 
exhales with the breath of the individual, as too 
costly to perpetuate. But I notice also that they 
may become fixed and permanent in any stock, by 
painting and repainting them on every individual, 
until at last Nature adopts them and bakes them 
into her porcelain. 



38 ARISTOCRACY. 

At all events I take this inextinguishable persua- 
sion in men's minds as a hint from the outward 
universe to man to inlay as many virtues and supe- 
riorities as he can into this swift fresco of the day, 
which is hardening to an immortal picture. 

If one thinks of the interest which all men have in 
beauty of character and manners ; that it is of the 
last importance to the imagination and affection, 
inspiring as it does that loyalty and worship so es- 
sential to the finish of character, — certainly, if cul- 
ture, if laws, if primogeniture, if heraldry, if money 
could secure such a result as superior and finished 
men, it would be the interest of all mankind to see 
that the steps were taken, the pains incurred. No 
taxation, no concession, no conferring of privileges 
never so exalted would be a price too large. 

The old French Kevolution attracted to its first 
movement all the liberality, virtue, hope and poetry 
in Europe. By the abolition of kingship and aris- 
tocracy, tyranny, inequality and poverty would end. 
Alas ! no ; tyranny, inequality, poverty, stood as fast 
and fierce as ever. We likewise put faith in Democ- 
racy ; in the Republican principle carried out to the 
extremes of practice in universal suffrage, in the will 
of majorities. The young adventurer finds that the 
relations of society, the position of classes, irk and 
sting him, and he lends himself to each malignant 
party that assails what is eminent. He will one 



ARISTOCRACY. 39 

day know that this is not removable, but a distinc- 
tion in the nature of things ; that neither the caucus, 
nor the newspaper, nor the Congress, nor the mob, 
nor the guillotine, nor fire, nor all together, can avail 
to outlaw, cut out, burn, or destroy the offense of su- 
periority in persons. The rxianners, the pretension, 
which annoy me so much, are not superficial, but 
built on a real distinction in the nature of my com- 
panion. The superiority in him is inferiority in 
me, and if this particular companion were wiped 
by a sponge out of nature, my inferiority would still 
be made evident to me by other persons everywhere 
and every day. 

No, not the hardest utilitarian will question the 
value of an aristocracy if he love himself. For 
every man confesses that the highest good which 
the universe proposes to him is the highest society. 
If a few grand natures should come to us and weave 
duties and offices between us and them, it would 
make our bread ambrosial. 

I affirm that inequalities exist, not in costume, 
but in the powers of expression and action ; a prim- 
itive aristocracy ; and that we, certainly, have not 
come here to describe well-dressed vulgarity. I 
cannot tell how English titles are bestowed, whether 
on pure blood, or on the largest holder in the three- 
per-cents. The English government and people, oi 
the French government, may easily make mistakes j 



40 ARISTOCRACY. 

but Nature makes none. Every mark and scutch- 
eon of hers indicates constitutional qualities. In 
science, in trade, in social discourse, as in the state, 
it is the same thing. Forever and ever it takes a 
pound to lift a pound. 

It is plain that all the deference of modern soci- 
•' ety to this idea of the Gentleman, and all the whim- 
sical tyranny of Fashion which has continued to en- 
graft itself on this reverence, is a secret homage to 
reality and love which ought to reside in every man. 
This is the steel that is hid under gauze and lace, 
under flowers and spangles. And it is plain that 
instead of this idolatry, a worship ; instead of this 
impure, a pure reverence for character, a new re- 
spect for the sacredness of the individual man, is 
that antidote which must correct in our country the 
disgraceful deference to public opinion, and the in- 
sane subordination of the end to the means. From 
the folly of too much association we must come back 
to the repose of self-reverence and trust. 

The game of the world is a perpetual trial of 
strength between man and events. The common 
man is the victim of events. Whatever happens is 
too much for him, he is drawn this way and that 
way, and his whole life is a hurry. The superior 
man is at home in his own mind. We like cool 
people, who neither hope nor fear too much, but 
seem to have many strings to their bow, and can 



ARISTOCRACY. 41 

survive the blow well enough if stock should rise 
or fall, if parties should be broken up, if their money 
or their family should be dispersed ; who can stand 
a slander very well ; indeed on whom events make 
little or no impression, and who can face death with 
firmness. In short, we dislike every mark of a su- 
perficial life and action, and prize whatever mark 
of a central life. 

What is the meaning of this invincible respect 
for war, here in the triumphs of our commercial 
civilization, that we can never quite smother the 
trumpet and the drum ? How is it that the sword 
runs away with all the fame from the spade and the 
wheel ? How sturdy seem to us in the history, those 
Merovingians, Guelphs, Dorias, Sforzas, Burgun- 
dies and Guesclins of the old warlike ages ! We 
can hardly believe they were all such speedy shad- 
ows as we ; that an ague or fever, a drop of water 
or a crystal of ice ended them. We give soldiers 
the same advantage to-day. From the most accu- 
mulated culture we are always running back to the 
sound of any drum and fife. And in any trade, or 
in law-courts, in orchard and farm, and even in sa- 
loons, they only prosper or they prosper best who 
have a military mind, who engineer in sword and 
cannon style, with energy and sharpness. Why, 
but because courage never loses its high price? 
Why, but because we wish to see those to whom ex 



42 ARISTOCRACY. 

istence is most adorned and attractive, foremost to 
peril it for their object, and ready to answer for 
their actions with their life. 

The existence of an upper class is not injurious, 
as long as it is dependent on merit. For so long it 
is provocation to the bold and generous. These 
distinctions exist, and they are deep, not to be 
talked or voted away. If the differences are or- 
ganic, so are the merits, that is to say the power 
and excellence we describe are real. Aristocracy 
is the class eminent by personal qualities, and to 
them belongs without assertion a proper influence. 
Men of aim must lead the aimless ; men of inven- 
tion the uninventive. I wish catholic men, who by 
their science and skill are at home in every latitude 
and longitude, who carry the world in their 
thoughts ; men of universal politics, who are inter- 
ested in things in proportion to their truth and mag- 
nitude ; who know the beauty of animals and the 
laws of their nature, whom the mystery of botany 
allures, and the mineral laws ; who see general ef- 
fects and are not too learned to love the Imagi- 
nation, the power and the spirits of Solitude ; — 
men who see the dance in men's lives as well as in 
a ball-room, and can feel and convey the sense 
which is only collectively or totally expressed by a 
population ; men who are charmed by the beauti- 
ful Nemesis as well as by the dire Nemesis, and 



ARISTOCRACY. 43 

dare trust their inspiration for their welcome ; who 
would find their fellows in persons of real elevation 
of whatever kind of speculative or practical ability. 
We are fallen on times so acquiescent and tradi- 
tionary that we are in danger of forgetting so sim- 
ple a fact as that the basis of all aristocracy must 
be truth, — the doing what elsewhere is pretended 
to be done. One would gladly see all our institu- 
tions rightly aristocratic in this wise. 

I enumerate the claims by which men enter the 
superior class. 

1. A commanding talent. In every company 
one finds the best man ; and if there be any ques- 
tion, it is decided the instant they enter into any 
practical enterprise. If the finders of glass, gun° 
powder, printing, electricity, — if the healer of 
small-pox, the contriver of the safety lamp, of the 
aqueduct, of the bridge, of the tunnel ; if the find- 
ers of parallax, of new planets, of steam power for 
boat and carriage, the finder of sulphuric ether and 
the electric telegraph, — if these men should keep 
their secrets, or only communicate them to each 
otlier, must not the whole race of mankind serve 
them as gods ? It only needs to look at the social 
aspect of England and America and France, to 
see the rank which original practical talent com- 
mands. 

Every survey of the dignified classes, in ancient 



44 ARISTOCRACY 

or modern history, imprints universal lessons, and 
establishes a nobility of a prouder creation. And 
the conclusion which Roman Senators, Indian Brah- 
mins, Persian Magians, European Nobles and great 
Americans inculcate, — that which they preach out 
of their material wealth and glitter, out of their 
old war and modern land-owning, even out of sen- 
suality and sneers, is, that the radical and essential 
distinctions of every aristocracy are moral. Do 
not hearken to the men, but to the Destiny in the 
institutions. An aristocracy is composed of simple 
and sincere men for whom nature and ethics are 
strong enough, who say what they mean and go 
straight to their objects. It is essentially real. 

The multiplication of monarchs known by tele- 
graph and daily news from all countries to the 
daily papers, and the effect of freer institutions in 
England and America, has robbed the title of king 
of all its romance, as that of our commercial con- 
suls as compared with the ancient Roman. We 
shall come to add " Kings " in the " Contents" of 
the Directory, as we do " Physicians," '' Brokers," 
etc. In simple communities, in the heroic ages, a 
man was chosen for his knack ; got his name, rank 
and living for that ; and the best of the best was 
the aristocrat or king. In the Norse Edda it ap- 
pears as the curious but excellent policy of con- 
tending tribes, when tired of war, to exchange host- 



ARISTOCRACY. 45 

ages, and in reality each to adopt from the other a 
first-rate man, who thus acquired a new country ; 
was at once made a chief. And no wrong was so 
keenly resented as any fraud in this transaction. 
In the heroic ages, as we call them, the hero uni~ 
formly has some real talent. Ulysses in Homer is 
represented as a very skiKul carpenter. He builds 
the boat with which he leaves Calypso's isle, and in 
his own palace carves a bedstead out of the trunk 
of a tree and inlays it with gold and ivory. Epeus 
builds the wooden horse. The English nation down 
to a late age inherited the reality of the Northern 
stock. In 1373, in writs of summons of members 
of Parliament, the sheriff of every county is to 
cause "two dubbed knights, or the most worthy 
esquires, the most expert in feats of arms, and no 
others ; and of every city, two citizens, and of every 
borough, two burgesses, such as have greatest skill 
in shipping and merchandising, to be returned." 

The ancients were fond of ascribing to their no- 
bles gigantic proportions and strength. The hero 
must have the force of ten men. The chief is 
taller by a Head than any of his tribe. Douglas 
can throw the bar a greater cast. Richard can 
sever the iron bolt with his sword. The horn of 
Roland, in the romance, is heard sixty miles. The 
Cid has a prevailing health that will let him nurse 
the leper, and share his bed without harm. And 



46 ARISTOCRACY. 

since the body is the pipe through which we tap 
all the succors and virtues of the material world, it 
is certain that a sound body must be at the root of 
any excellence in manners and actions ; a strong 
and supple frame which yields a stock of strength 
and spirits for all the needs of the day, and gener- 
ates the habit of relying on a supply of power for 
all extraordinary exertions. When Nature goes to 
create a national man, she puts a symmetry between 
the physical and intellectual powers. She moulds 
a large brain, and joins to it a great trunk to sup- 
ply it ; as if a fine alembic were fed with liquor 
for its distillations from broad full vats in the 
vaults of the laboratory. 

Certainly, the origin of most of the perversities 
and absurdities that disgust us is, primarily, the 
want of health. Genius is health and Beauty is 
health and Virtue is health. The petty arts which 
we blame in the half-great seem as odious to them 
also ; — the resources of weakness and despair. 
And the manners betray the like puny constitu- 
tion. Temperament is fortune, and we must say it 
so often. In a thousand cups of life, onl}?^ one is 
the right mixture, — a fine adjustment to the exist- 
ing elements. When that befalls, when the well- 
mixed man is born, with eyes not too dull nor too 
good, with fire enough and earth enough, capable 
of impressions from all things, and not too suscep 



ARISTOCRACY. 47 

tible, — then no gift need be bestowed on him, he 
brings with him fortune, followers, love, power. 
" I think he'll be to Rome 

As is the osprey to the fish, who takes it 

By sovereignty of nature." 

Not the phrenologist but the philosopher may 
well say, Let me see his brain, and I will tell you 
if he shall be poet, king, founder of cities, rich, 
magnetic, of a secure hand, of a scientific memory, 
a right classifier ; or whether he shall be a bun- 
gler, driveller, unlucky, heavy, and tedious. 

It were to dispute against the sun, to deny this 
difference of brain. I see well enough that when 
I bring one man into an estate, he sees vague capa- 
bilities, what others might, could, would, or should 
do with it. If I bring another man, he sees what 
he should do with it. He appreciates the water- 
privilege, land fit for orchard, tillage, pasturage, 
wood-lot, cranberry-meadow ; but just as easily he 
foresees all the means, all the steps of the process, 
and could lay his hand as readily on one as on an- 
other point in that series which opens the capability 
to the last point. The poet sees wishfully enough 
the result; the well-built head supplies all the 
steps, one as perfect as the other, in the series. See- 
ing this working head in him, it becomes to me as 
certain that he will have the direction of estates, as 
that there are estates. If we see tools in a maga- 



48 ARISTOCRACY. 

zine, as a file, an anchor, a plough, a pump, a paint- 
brush, a cider-press, a diving-bell, we can predict 
well enough their destination ; and the man's as- 
sociations, fortunes, love, hatred, residence, rank, 
the books he will buy, the roads he will traverse 
are predetermined in his organism. Men will need 
him, and he is rich and eminent by nature. That 
man cannot be too late or too early. Let him not 
hurry or hesitate. Though millions are already 
arrived, his seat is reserved. Though millions at- 
tend, they only multiply his friends and agents. 
It never troubles the Senator what multitudes 
crack the benches and bend the galleries to hear. 
He who understands the art of war, reckons the hos- 
tile battalions and cities, opportimities and spoils. 

An aristocracy could not exist unless it were or- 
ganic. Men are born to command, and — it is 
even so — " come into the world booted and spurred 
to ride." The blood royal never pays, we say. It 
obtains service, gifts, supplies, furtherance of all 
kinds from the love and joy of those who feel 
themselves honored by the service they render. 

Dull people think it Fortune that makes one 
rich and another poor. Is it ? Yes, but the for- 
tune was earlier than they think, namely, in the 
balance or adjustment between devotion to what is 
agreeable to-day and the forecast of what will be 
valuable to-morrow. 



ARISTOCRACY. 49 

Certainly I am not going to argue the merits of 
gradation in the universe; the existing order of 
more or less. Neither do I wish to go into a vin- 
dication of the justice that disposes the variety of 
lot. I know how steep the contrast of condition 
looks ; such excess here and such destitution there ; 
like entire chance, like the freaks of the wind, 
heaping the snow-drift in gorges, stripping the 
plain ; such despotism of wealth and comfort in 
banquet-halls, whilst death is in the pots of the 
wretched, — that it behooves a good man to walk 
with tenderness and heed amidst so much suffering. 
I only point in passing to the order of the universe, 
which makes a rotation, — not like the coarse pol- 
icy of the Greeks, ten generals, each commanding 
one day and then giving place to the next, or like 
our democratic politics, my turn now, your turn 
next, — but the constitution of things has distrib- 
uted a new quality or talent to each mind, and the 
revolution of things is always bringing the need, 
now of this, now of that, and is sure to bring home 
the opportunity to every one. 

The only relief that I know against the invidi- 
ousness of superior position is, that you exert your 
faculty ; for whilst each does that, he excludes hard 
thoughts from the spectator. All right activity is 
amiable. I never feel that any man occupies my 
place, but that the reason why I do not have what 



50 ARISTOCRACY, 

I wish, IS, that I want the faculty which entitles. 
All spiritual or real power makes its own place. 

We pass for what we are, and we prosper or fail 
by what we are. There are men who may dare 
much and will be justified in their daring. But it 
is because they know they are in their place. As 
long as I am in my place, I am safe. " The best 
lightning-rod for your protection is your own 
spine." Let a man's social aims be proportioned 
to his means and power. I do not pity the misery 
of a man underplaced : that will right itself pres- 
ently : but I pity the man overplaced. A certain 
quantity of power belongs to a certain quantity of 
faculty. Whoever wants more power than is the 
legitimate attraction of his faculty, is a politician, 
and must pay for that excess ; must truckle for it. 
This is the whole game of society and the politics 
of the world. Being will always seem well ; — 
but whether possibly I cannot contrive to seem, 
without the trouble of being ? Every Frenchman 
would have a career. We English are not any 
better with our love of making a figure. " I told 
the Duke of Newcastle," says Bubb Doddington in 
his Memoirs, " that it must end one way or an- 
other, it must not remain as it was ; for I was de- 
termined to make some sort of a figure in life ; I 
earnestly wished it might be under his protection, 
but if that could not be, I must make some figure ; 



ARISTOCRACY. 51 

what it woxild be I could not determine yet; I 
must look round me a little and consult my friends, 
but some figure I was resolved to make." 

It will be agreed everywhere that society must 
have the benefit of the best leaders. How to 
obtain them? Birth has been tried and failed. 
Caste in India has no good result. Ennobling of 
one family is good for one generation ; not sure be- 
yond. Slavery had mischief enough to answer for, 
but it had this good in it, — the pricing of men. 
In the South a slave was bluntly but accurately 
valued at five hundred to a thousand dollars, if a 
good field-hand; if a mechanic, as carpenter or 
smith, twelve hundred or two thousand. In Rome 
or Greece what sums would not be paid for a supe- 
rior slave, a confidential secretary and manager, an 
educated slave ; a man of genius, a Moses educated 
in Egypt ? I don't know how much Epictetus was 
sold for, or ^sop, or Toussaint FOuverture, and 
perhaps it was not a good market-day. Time was, 
in England, when the state stipulated beforehand 
what price should be paid for each citizen's life, if 
he was killed. Now, if it were possible, I should 
like to see that appraisal applied to every man, and 
every man made acquainted with the true number 
and weight of every adult citizen, and that he be 
placed where he belongs, with so much power con- 
fided to him as he could carry and use. 



52 ARISTOCRACY. 

In the absence of such anthropometer I have a 
perfect confidence in the natural laws. I think 
that the community, — every community, if ob- 
structing laws and usages are removed, — will be 
the best measure and the justest judge of the citi- 
zen, or will in the long run give the fairest verdict 
and reward ; better than any royal patronage ; bet- 
ter than any premium on race ; better than any 
statute elevating families to hereditary distinction, 
or any class to sacerdotal education and power. 
The verdict of battles will best prove the general ; 
the town-meeting, the Congress, will not fail to find 
out legislative talent. The prerogatives of a right 
physician are determined, not by his diplomas, but 
by the health he restores to body and mind ; the 
powers of a geometer by solving his problem ; of a 
priest by the act of inspiring us with a sentiment 
which disperses the grief from which we suffered. 
When the lawyer tries his case in court he himself 
is also on trial and his own merits appear as well 
as his client's. When old writers are consulted by 
young writers who have written their first book, 
they say. Publish it by all means ; so only can you 
certainly know its quality. 

But we venture to put any man in any place. It 
is curious how negligent the public is of the essen- 
tial qualifications of its representatives. They ask 
if a man is a republican, a democrat ? Yes. Is he 



ARISTOCRACY. 53 

a man of talent ? Yes. Is he honest and not look- 
ing for an office or any manner of bribe ? He is 
honest. Well then choose him by acclamation. 
And they go home and tell their wives with great 
satisfaction what a good thing they have done. 
But they forgot to ask the fourth question, not less 
important than either of the others, and without 
which the others do not avail. Has he a will ? 
Can he carry his points against opposition ? Prob- 
ably not. It is not sufficient that your work fol- 
lows your genius, or is organic, to give you the 
magnetic power over men. More than taste and 
talent must go to the Will. That must also be a 
gift of nature. It is in some ; it is not in others. 
But I should say, if it is not in you, you had bet- 
ter not put yourself in places where not to have it 
is to be a public enemy. 

The expectation and claims of mankind indicate 
the duties of this class. Some service they must 
pay. We do not expect them to be saints, and it 
is very pleasing to see the instinct of mankind on 
this matter, — how much they will forgive to such 
as pay substantial service and work energetically 
after their kind ; but they do not extend the same 
indulgence to those who claim and enjoy the same 
prerogative but render no returns. The day is 
darkened when the golden river runs down into 
mud ; when genius grows idle and wanton and 



54 ARISTOCRACY. 

reckless of its fine duties of being Saint, Prophet, 
InsjDirer to its humble fellows, baulks their respect 
and confounds their understanding by silly extrav- 
agances. To a right aristocracy, to Hercules, to 
Theseus, Odin, the Cid, Napoleon; to Sir Kob- 
ert Walpole, to Fox, Chatham, Mirabeau, Jefferson, 
O'Connell ; — to the men, that is, who are incom- 
parably superior to the populace in ways agreeable 
to the populace, showing them the way they should 
go, doing for them what they wish done and cannot 
do ; — of course everything will be permitted and 
pardoned, — gaming, drinking, fighting, luxury. 
These are the heads of party, who can do no wrong, 
— everything short of infamous crime will pass. 
But if those who merely sit in their places and 
are not, like them, able; if the dressed and per- 
fumed gentleman, who serves the people in no wise 
and adorns them not, is not even not afraid of 
them^ if such an one go about to set ill examples 
and corrupt them, who shall blame them if they 
burn his barns, insult his children, assault his per- 
son, and express their unequivocal indignation and 
contempt ? He eats their bread, he does not scorn 
to live by their labor, and after breakfast he can- 
not remember that there are human beings. To 
live without duties is obscene. 

2. Genius, what is so called in strictness, — the 
power to affect the Imagination, as possessed by 



ARISTOCRACY. 55 

the orator, the poet, the novelist, or the artist, — 
has a royal right in all possessions and privileges, 
being itself representative and accepted by all men 
as their delegate. It has indeed the best right, 
because it raises men above themselves, intoxicates 
them with beauty. They are honored by render- 
ing it honor, and the reason of this allowance is 
that Genius unlocks for all men the chains of use, 
temperament and drudgery, and gives them a sense 
of delicious liberty and power. 

The first example that occurs is an extraordinary 
gift of eloquence. ' A man who has that possession 
of his means and that magnetism that he can at 
all times carry the convictions of a public assembly, 
we must respect, and he is thereby ennobled. He 
has the freedom of the city. He is entitled to neg- 
lect trifles. Like a great general, or a great poet, 
or a millionaire, he may wear his coat out at el- 
bows, and his hat on his feet, if he will. He has 
established relation, representativeness. The best 
feat of genius is to bring all the varieties of talent 
and culture into its audience ; the mediocre and 
the dull are reached as well as the intelligent. I 
have seen it conspicuously shown in a village. 
Here are classes which day by day have no inter- 
course, nothing beyond perhaps a surly nod in 
passing. But I have seen a man of teeming brain 
come among these men, so full of his facts, so un- 



56 ARISTOCRACY. 

able to suppress them, that he has poured out a 
river of knowledge to all comers, and drawing all 
these men round him, all sorts of men, interested 
the whole village, good and bad, bright and stupid, 
in his facts ; the iron boundary lines had all faded 
away; the stupid had discovered that they were 
not stupid ; the coldest had found themselves 
drawn to their neighbors by interest in the same 
things. This was a naturalist. 

The more familiar examples of this power cer- 
tainly are those who establish a wider dominion 
over men's minds than any speech can ; who think, 
and paint, and laugh, and weep, in their eloquent 
closets, and then convert the world into a huge 
whispering gallery, to report the tale to all men, 
and win smiles and tears from many generations. 
The eminent examples are Shakspeare, Cervan- 
tes, Bunyan, Burns, Scott, and now we must add 
Dickens. In the fine arts, I find none in the pres- 
ent age who have any popular power, who have 
achieved any nobility by ennobling the people. 

3. Elevation of sentiment, refining and inspiring 
the manners, must really take the place of every 
distinction whether of material power or of intel- 
lectual gifts. The manners of course must have 
that depth and firmness of tone to attest their cen= 
trality in the nature of the man. I mean the 
things themselves shall be judges, and determine. 



ARISTOCRACY. 57 

In the presence of this nobility even genius must 
stand aside. For the two poles of nature are 
Beauty and Meanness, and noble sentiment is the 
highest form of Beauty. He is beautiful in face, 
in port, in manners, who is absorbed in objects 
which he truly believes to be superior to himself. 
Is there any parchment or any cosmetic or any 
blood that can obtain homage like that security of 
air presupposing so undoubtingiy the sympathy of 
men in his designs? What is it that makes the 
true knight ? Loyalty to his thought. That makes 
the beautiful scorn, the elegant simplicity, the di- 
rectness, the commanding port which all men 
admire and which men not noble affect. For the 
thought has no debts, no hunger, no lusts, no low 
obligations or relations, no intrigue or business, no 
murder, no envy, no crime, but large leisures and 
an inviting future. 

The service we receive from the great is a mu- 
tual deference. If you deal with the vulgar, life is 
reduced to beggary indeed. The astronomers are 
very eager to know whether the moon has an at- 
mosphere ; I am only concerned that every man 
have one. I observe however that it takes tv/o to 
make an atmosphere. I am acquainted with per- 
sons who go attended with this ambient cloud. It 
is sufficient that they come. It is not important 
what they say. The sun and the evening sky are 



58 ARISTOCRACY. 

not calmer. They seem to have arrived at the 
fact, to have got rid of the show, and to be serene. 
Their manners and behavior in the house and in 
the field are those of men at rest : what have they 
to conceal? what have they to exhibit? Others I 
meet, who have no deference, and who denude and 
strip one of all attributes but material values. As 
much health and muscle as you have, as much land, 
as much house-room and dinner, avails. Of course 
a man is a poor bag of bones. There is no gra- 
cious interval, not an inch allowed. Bone rubs 
against bone. Life is thus a Beggar's Bush. I 
know nothing which induces so base and forlorn a 
feeling as when we are treated for our utilities, as 
economists do, starving the imagination and the 
sentiment. In this impoverishing animation, I 
seem to meet a Hunger, a wolf. Rather let us be 
alone whilst we live, than encounter these lean 
kine. Man should emancipate man. He does so, 
not by jamming him, but by distancing him. The 
nearer my friend, the more spacious is our realm, 
the more diameter our spheres have. It is a meas- 
ure of culture, the number of things taken for 
granted. When a man begins to speak, the churl 
will take him up by disputing his first words, so he 
eannot come at his scope. The wise man takes all 
for granted imtil he sees the parallelism of that 
which puzzled him with his own view. 



ARISTOCRACY. 59 

I will not protract this discourse by describing 
the duties of the brave and generous. And yet I 
will venture to name one, and the same is almost 
the sole condition on which knighthood is to be 
won ; this, namely, loyalty to your own order. The 
true aristocrat is he who is at the head of his own 
order, and disloyalty is to mistake other chivalries 
for his own. Let him not divide his homage, but 
stand for that which he was born and set to main- 
tain. It was objected to Gustavus that he did not 
better distinguish between the duties of a carabine 
and a general, but exposed himself to all dangers 
and was too prodigal of a blood so precious. For 
a soul on which elevated duties are laid will so 
realize its special and lofty duties as not to be in 
danger of assuming through a low generosity those 
which do not belong to it. 

There are all degrees of nobility, but amid tho 
levity and giddiness of people one looks round, as 
for a tower of strength, on some self-dependent 
mind, who does not go abroad for an estimate, and 
has long ago made up its conclusion that it is im- 
possible to fail. The great Indian sages had a 
lesson for the Brahmin, which every day returns to 
mind, " All that depends on another gives pain ; 
aU that depends on himself gives pleasure ; in these 
few words is the definition of pleasure and pain." 
The noble mind is here to teach us that failure is 



60 ARISTOCRACY. 

a part of success. Prosperity and poiind-cake are 
for very young gentlemen, whom such things con=> 
tent ; but a hero's, a man's success is made up of 
failures, because he experiments and ventures every 
day, and " the more falls he gets, moves faster on ; " 
defeated all the time and yet to victory born. I 
have heard that in horsemanship he is not the good 
rider who never was thrown, but rather that a man 
never will be a good rider until he is thrown ; then 
he will not be haunted any longer by the terror 
that he shall tumble, and will ride ; — that is his 
business, — to ride, whether with falls or whether 
with none, to ride unto the place whither he is 
bound. And I know no such unquestionable badge 
and ensign of a sovereign mind, as that tenacity 
of purpose which, through all change of compan- 
ions, of parties, of fortunes, — changes never, bates 
no jot of heart or hope, but wearies out opposition, 
and arrives /at its port. In his consciousness of de- 
serving siitcess, the caliph Ali constantly neglected 
the ordiriary means of attaining it ; and to the 
grand interests, a superficial success is of no ac- 
count/ It prospers as well in mistake as in luck, 
in obstruction and nonsense, as well as among the 
angels ; it reckons fortunes mere paint ; difficulty 
is^ its delight : perplexity is its noonday : minds 
that make their way without winds and against 
tides. But these are rare and difficult examples, 



ARISTOCRACY. 61 

we can only indicate them to show how high is the 
range of the realm of Honor. 

I know the feeling of the most ingenious and ex- 
cellent youth in America ; I hear the complaint of 
the aspirant that we have no prizes offered to the 
ambition of virtuous young men ; that there is no 
Theban Band ; no stern exclusive Legion of Honor, 
to be entered only by long and real service and pa- 
tient climbing up all the steps. We have a rich 
men's aristocracy, plenty of bribes for those who 
like them ; but a grand style of culture, which, 
without injury, an ardent youth can propose to 
himself as a Pharos through long dark years, does 
not exist, and there is no substitute. The youth, 
having got through the first thickets that oppose his 
entrance into life, having got into decent society, is 
left to himself, and faUs abroad with too much free- 
dom. But in the hours of insight we rally against 
this skepticism. We then see that if the ignorant 
are around us, the great are much more near ; that 
there is an order of men, never quite absent, who 
enroll no names in their archives but of such as are 
capable of truth. They are gathered in no one 
chamber ; no chamber would hold them ; but, out 
of the vast duration of man's race, they tower like 
mountains, and are present to every mind in pro- 
portion to its likeness to theirs. The solitariest 
man who shares their spirit walks environed by 



62 ARISTOCRACY. 

them; they talk to him, they comfort him, and 
happy is he who prefers these associates to profane 
companions. They also take shape in men, in 
women. There is no heroic trait, no sentiment or 
thought that will not sometime embody itself in the 
form of a friend. That highest good of rational 
existence is always coming to such as reject mean 
alliances. 

One trait more we must celebrate, the self- 
reliance which is the patent of royal natures. It 
is so prized a jewel that it is sure to be tested. 
The rules and discipline are ordered for that. The 
Golden Table never lacks members ; all its seats 
are kept full ; but with this strange provision, that 
the members are carefully withdrawn into deep 
niches, so that no one of them can see any other of 
them, and each believes himself alone. In the 
presence of the Chapter it is easy for each member 
to carry himself royally and well ; but in the ab- 
sence of his colleagues and in the presence of mean 
people he is tempted to accept the low customs of 
towns. The honor of a member consists in an in- 
differency to the persons and practices about him, 
and in the pursuing undisturbed the career of a 
Brother, as if always in their presence, and as if no 
other existed. Give up, once for all, the hope of 
approbation from the people in the street, if you 
are pursuing great ends. How can they guess your 
designs ? 



ARISTOCRACY. 63 

All reference to models, all comparison with 
neighboring abilities and reputations, is the road 
to mediocrity. The generous soul, on arriving in 
a new port, makes instant preparation for a new 
voyage. By experiment, by original studies, by 
secret obedience, he has made a place for himself 
in the world ; stands there a real, substantial, un- 
precedented person, and when the great come by, 
as always there are angels walking in the earth, 
they know him at sight. Effectual service in his 
own legitimate fashion distinguishes the true man. 
For he is to know that the distinction of a royal 
nature is a great heart ; that not Louis Quatorze, 
not Chesterfield, nor Byron, nor Bonaparte is the 
model of the Century, but, wherever found, the old 
renown attaches to the virtues of simple faith and 
staunch endurance and clear perception and plain 
speech, and that there is a master grace and dig- 
nity communicated by exalted sentiments to a hu- 
man form, to which utility and even genius must 
do homage. And it is the sign and badge of this 
nobility, the drawing his counsel from his own 
breast. For to every gentleman, grave and dan- 
gerous duties are proposed. Justice always wants 
champions. The world waits for him as its de- 
fender, for he will find in the well-dressed crowd, 
yes, in the civility of whole nations, vulgarity of 
sentiment. In the best parlors of modern society 



64 ARISTOCRACY. 

he will find the laughing devil, the civil sneer ; in 
English palaces the London twist, derision, cold- 
ness, contempt of the masses, contempt of Ireland, 
dislike of the Chartist. The English House of 
Commons is the proudest assembly of gentlemen in 
the world, yet the genius of the House of Commons, 
its legitimate expression, is a sneer. In America 
he shaU find deprecation of purism on all questions 
touching the morals of trade and of social customs, 
and the narrowest contraction of ethics to the one 
duty of paying money. Pay that, and you may 
play the tyrant at discretion and never look back 
to the fatal question, — where had you the money 
that you paid ? 

I know the difficulties in the way of the man of 
honor. The man of honor is a man of taste and 
humanity. By tendency, like all magnanimous 
men, he is a democrat. But the revolution comes, 
and does he join the standard of Chartist and out- 
law? No, for these have been dragged in their 
ignorance by furious chiefs to the Red Revolu- 
tion ; they are full of murder, and the student re- 
coils, — and joins the rich. If he cannot vote with 
the poor, he should stay by himself. Let him ac- 
cept the position of armed neutrality, abhorring the 
crimes of the Chartist, abhorring the selfishness of 
the rich, and say, ' The time will come when these 
poor enfans perdus of revolution will have in- 



ARISTOCRACY. 65 

structed their party, if only by their fate, and wiser 
counsels will prevail ; the music and the dance of 
liberty will come up to bright and holy ground and 
will take me in also. Then I shall not have for- 
feited my right to speak and act for mankind.' 
Meantime shame to the fop of learning and philos- 
ophy who suffers a vulgarity of speech and habit 
to blind him to the grosser vulgarity of pitiless 
selfishness, and to hide from him the current of 
Tendency ; who abandons his right position of be- 
ing priest and poet of these impious and unpoetic 
doers of God's work. You must, for wisdom, for 
sanity, have some access to the mind and heart of 
the common humanity. The exclusive excludes 
himself. No great man has existed who did not 
rely on the sense and heart of mankind as repre- 
sented by the good sense of the people, as correct- 
ing the modes and over-refinements and class-preju- 
dices of the lettered men of the world. 

There are certain conditions in the highest de- 
gree favorable to the tranquillity of spirit and to 
that magnanimity we so prize. And mainly the 
habit of considering large interests, and things in 
masses, and not too much in detail. The habit 
of directing large affairs generates a nobility of 
thought in every mind of average ability. For af- 
fairs themselves show the way in which they should 
be handled ; and a good head soon grows wise, and 
does not govern too much. 

YOL. Xc 5 



66 ARISTOCRACY. 

Now I believe in the closest affinity between 
moral and material power. Virtue and genius are 
always on the direct way to the control of the soci- 
ety in which they are found. It is the interest of 
society that good men should govern, and there is 
always a tendency so to place them. But, for the 
day that now is, a man of generous spirit will not 
need to administer public offices or to direct large 
interests of trade, or war, or politics, or manufac- 
ture, but he will use a high prudence in the con- 
duct of life to guard himself from being dissipated 
on many things. There is no need that he should 
count the pounds of property or the numbers of 
agents whom his influence touches ; it suffices that 
his aims are high, that the interest of intellectual 
and moral beings is paramount with him, that he 
comes into what is called fine society from higher 
ground, and he has an elevation of habit which 
ministers of empires will be forced to see and to 
remember. 

I do not know whether that word Gentleman, 
although it signifies a leading idea in recent civili- 
zation, is a sufficiently broad generalization to con- 
vey the deep and grave fact of self-reliance. To 
many the word expresses only the outsides of culti- 
vated men, — only graceful manners, and independ- 
ence in trifles ; but the fountains of that thought 
are in the deeps of man, a beauty which readies 



ARISTOCRACY. 67 

through and through, from the manners to the soul ; 
an honor which is only a name for sanctity, a self- 
trust which is a trust in God himself. Call it man 
of honor, or call it Man, the American who would 
serve his country must learn the beauty and honor 
of perseverance, he must reinforce himseK by the 
power of character, and revisit the margin of that 
well from which his fathers drew waters of life and 
enthusiasm, the fountain I mean of the moral sen- 
timents, the parent fountain from which this goodly 
Universe flows as a wave. 



PERPETUAL FORCES» 



"More servants wait on man 
Than he '11 take notice of." 

George Herbert. 



Ever the Rock of Ages melts 

Into the mineral air, 
To be the quarry whence is built 

Thought and its mansions fair. 



PERPETUAL FORCES. 



The hero in the fairy tales has a servant who can 
eat granite rocks, another who can hear the grass 
grow, and a third who can run a hundred leagues 
in half an hour ; so man in nature is surrounded 
by a gang of friendly giants who can accept harder 
stints than these, and help him in every kind. 
Each by itself has a certain omnipotence, but all, 
like contending kings and emperors, in the presence 
of each other, are antagonized and kept polite and 
own the balance of power. 

We cannot afford to miss any advantage. Never 
was any man too strong for his proper work. Art 
is long, and life short, and he must supply this dis- 
proportion by borrowing and applying to his task 
the energies of Nature. Reinforce his self-respect, 
show him his means, his arsenal of forces, physical, 
metaphysical, immortal. Show him the riches of 
the poor, show him what mighty allies and helpers 
he has. And though King David had no good 
from making his census out of vain-glory, yet I find 

* Reprinted from the North American Review^ No. 125, 1877. 



72 PERPETUAL FORCES. 

it wholesome and invigorating to enumerate the re- 
sources we can command, to look a little into this 
arsenal, and see how many rounds of ammunition, 
what muskets, and how many arms better than 
Springfield muskets, we can bring to bear. 

Go out of doors and get the air. Ah, if you 
knew what was in the air. See what your robust 
neighbor, who never feared to live in it, has got 
from it ; strength, cheerf idness, power to convince, 
heartiness and equality to each event. 

All the earths are burnt metals. One half the 
avoirdupois of the rocks which compose the solid 
crust of the globe consists of oxygen. The ada- 
mant is always passing into smoke ; the marble 
column, the brazen statue burn under the day- 
light, and would soon decompose if their molec- 
ular structure, disturbed by the raging sunlight, 
were not restored by the darkness of the night. 
What agencies of electricity, gravity, light, affin- 
ity combine to make every plant what it is, and in 
a manner so quiet that the presence of these tre- 
mendous powers is not ordinarily suspected. Fara- 
day said, " A grain of water is known to have elec- 
tric relations equivalent to a very powerful flash of 
lightning." The ripe fruit is dropped at last with- 
out violence, but the lightning fell and the storm 
raged, and strata were deposited and uptorn and 
bent back, and Chaos moved from beneath, to 



PERPETUAL FORCES. 73 

create and flavor the fruit on your table to-day. 
The winds and the rains come back a thousand 
and a thousand times. The coal on your grate 
gives out in decomposing to-day exactly the same 
amount of light and heat which was taken from the 
sunshine in its formation in the leaves and boughs 
of the antediluvian tree. 

Take up a spadeful or a buck-load of loam ; who 
can guess what it holds ? But a gardener knows 
that it is full of peaches, full of oranges, and he 
drops in a few seeds by way of keys to unlock and 
combine its virtues ; lets it lie in sun and rain, and 
by and by it has lifted into the air its full weight 
in golden fruit. 

The earliest hymns of the world were hymns to 
these natural forces. The Vedas of India, which 
have a date older than Homer, are hymns to the 
winds, to the clouds, and to fire. They all have 
certain properties which adhere to them, such as 
conservation, persisting to be themselves, impossi- 
bility of being warped. The sun has lost no beams, 
the earth no elements ; gravity is as adhesive, heat 
as expansive, light as joyful, air as virtuous, water 
as medicinal as on the first day. There is no loss, 
only transference. When the heat is less here it is 
not lost, but more heat is there. When the rain 
exceeds on the coast, there is drought on the prairie. 
When the continent sinks, the opposite continent, 



74 PERPETUAL FORCES. 

that is to say, the opposite shore of the ocean, rises. 
When life is less here, it spawns there. 

These forces are in an ascending series, but seem 
to leave no room for the individual ; man or atom, 
he only shares them ; he sails the way these irre- 
sistible winds blow. But behind all these are finer 
elements, the sources of them, and much more 
rapid and strong ; a new style and series, the spirit-, 
ual. Intellect and morals appear only the material 
forces on a higher plane. The laws of material 
nature run up into the invisible world of the mind, 
and hereby we acquire a key to those sublimities 
which skulk and hide in the caverns of human con- 
sciousness. And in the impenetrable mystery 
which hides — and hides through absolute transpar- 
ency — the mental nature, I await the insight which 
our advancing knowledge of material laws shall 
furnish. 

But the laws of force apply to every form of it. 
The husbandry learned in the economy of heat or 
light or steam or muscular fibre applies precisely 
to the use of wit. What I have said of the inexor- 
able persistence of every elemental force to remain 
itself, the impossibility of tampering with it or 
warping it, — the same rule applies again strictly 
to this force of intellect ; that it is perception, a see- 
ing, not making, thoughts. The man must bend to 
the lav/, never the law to him. 



PERPETUAL FORCES. 7f^ 

The brain of man has methods and arrangemeni \.h 
corresponding to these material powers, by which 
he can use them. See how trivial is the use of the 
world by any other of its creatures. Whilst these 
forces act on us from the outside and we are not in 
their counsel, we call them Fate. The animal in- 
stincts guide the animal as gravity governs the stone, 
and in man that bias or direction of his constitution 
is often as tyrannical as gravity. We call it tem- 
perament, and it seems to be the remains of wolf, 
ape, and rattlesnake in him. While the reason is 
yet dormant, this rules ; as the reflective faculties 
open, this subsides. We come to reason and knowl- 
edge ; we see the causes of evils and learn to parry 
them and use them as instruments, by knowledge, 
being inside of them and dealing with them as the 
Creator does. It is curious to see how a creature 
so feeble and vulnerable as a man, who, unarmed, 
\s no match for the wild beasts, tiger, or crocodile, 
none for the frost, none for the sea, none for a fog, 
or a damp air, or the feeble fork of a poor worm, — 
each of a thousand petty accidents puts him to 
death every day, — is yet able to subdue to his will 
these terrific forces, and more than these. His 
whole frame is responsive to the world, part for 
part, every sense, every pore to a new element, so 
that he seems to have as many talents as there are 
qualities in nature. No force but is his force. He 



76 PERPETUAL FORCES. 

does not possess them, he is a pipe through which 
their currents flow. If a straw be held still in the 
direction of the ocean-current, the sea will pour 
through it as through Gibraltar. If he should 
measure strength with them, if he should fight the 
sea and the whirlwind with his ship, he would snap 
his spars, tear his sails, and swamp his bark ; but 
by cunningly dividing the force, tapping the tem- 
pest for a little side-wind, he uses the monsters, and 
they carry him where he would go. Look at him ; 
you can give no guess at what power is in him. 
It never appears directly, but follow him and see 
his effects, see his productions. He is a planter, a 
miner, a shipbuilder, a machinist, a musician, a 
steam-engine, a geometer, an astronomer, a per- 
suader of men, a lawgiver, a builder of towns ; — 
and each of these by dint of a wonderful method or 
series that resides in him and enables him to work 
on the material elements. 

We are surrounded by human thought and labor. 
Where are the farmer's days gone ? See, they are 
hid in that stone-wall, in that excavated trench, in 
the harvest grown on what was shingle and pine- 
barren. He put his days into carting from the dis- 
tant swamp the mountain of muck which has been 
trundled about until it now makes the cover of fruit- 
ful soil. Labor hides itself in every mode and form. 
It is massed and blocked away in that stone house. 



PERPETUAL FORCES. 77 

for five hundred years. It is twisted and screwed 
into fragrant hay which fills the barn. It surprises in 
the perfect form and condition of trees clean of cat- 
erpillars and borers, rightly pruned, and loaded 
with grafted fruit. It is under the house in the 
well ; it is over the house in slates and copper and 
water-spout ; it grows in the corn ; it delights us 
in the flower-bed ; it keeps the cow out of the gar- 
den, the rain out of the library, the miasma out of 
the town. It is in dress, in pictures, in ships, in 
cannon ; in every spectacle, in odors, in flavors, in 
sweet sounds, in works of safety, of delight, of 
wrath, of science. 

The thoughts, no man ever saw, but disorder 
becomes order where he goes ; weakness becomes 
power ; surprising and admirable effects follow him 
like a creator. All forces are his ; as the wise mer- 
chant by truth in his dealings finds his credit un- 
limited, — he can use in turn, as he wants it, all 
the property in the world, — so a man draws on 
all the air for his occasions, as if there were no 
other breather ; on all the water as if there were no 
other sailor ; he is warmed by the sun, and so of 
every element ; he walks and works by the aid of 
gravitation ; he draws on aU knowledge as his prov- 
ince, on all beauty for his innocent delight, and 
first or last he exhausts by his use all the harvests, 
all the powers of the world. For man, the receiver 



T8 PERPETUAL FORCES. 

of all, and depositary of these volumes of power, 1 
am to say that his ability and performance are ac- 
cording to his reception of these various streams of 
force. We define Genius to be a sensibility to all 
the impressions of the outer world, a sensibility so 
equal that it receives accurately all impressions, and 
can truly report them, without excess or loss, as it 
received. It must not only receive all, but it must 
render all. And the health of man is an equality 
of inlet and outlet, gathering and giving. Any 
hoarding is tumor and disease. 

If we were truly to take account of stock before 
the last Court of Appeals, — that were an inven- 
tory ! . What are my resources ? " Our stock in 
life, our real estate, is that amount of thought 
which we have had," — and which we have ap- 
plied, and so domesticated. The ground we have 
thus created is forever a fund for new thoughts. 
A few moral maxims confirmed by much experi- 
ence would stand high on the list, constituting a 
supreme prudence. Then the knowledge unutter- 
able of our private strength, of where it lies, of its 
accesses and facilitations, and of its obstructions. 
My conviction of principles, — that is great part of 
Tny possessions. Certain thoughts, certain obser- 
vations, long familiar to me in night-watches and 
daylights, would be my capital if I removed to 
Spain or China, or, by stranger translation, to the 



PERPETUAL FORCES. 79 

planet Jupiter or Mars, or to new spiritual socie- 
ties. Every valuable person who joins in an enter- 
prise, — is it a piece of industry, or the founding 
of a colony or a college, the reform of some public 
abuse, or some effort of patriotism, — what he 
chiefly brings, all he brings, is not his land or his 
money or body's strength, but his thoughts, his way 
of classifying and seeing things, his method. And 
thus with every one a new power. In proportion 
to the depth of the insight is the power and reach 
of the kingdom he controls. 

It would be easy to awake wonder by sketching 
the performance of each of these mental forces ; as 
of the diving-bell of the Memory, which descends 
into the deeps of our past and oldest experience 
and brings up every lost jewel; or of the Fancy, 
which sends its gay balloon aloft into the sky to 
catch every tint and gleam of romance; of the 
Imagination, which turns every dull fact into pic- 
tures and poetry, by making it an emblem of 
thought. What a power, when, combined with the 
analyzing understanding, it makes Eloquence ; the 
art of compelling belief, the art of making peoples' 
hearts dance to his pipe ! And not less, method, 
patience, self-trust, perseverance, love, desire of 
knowledge, the passion for truth. These are the 
angels that take us by the hand, these our immor- 
tal, invulnerable guardians. By their strength v/e 



80 PERPETUAL FORCES. 

are strong, and on tlie signal occasions in our car 
reer tlieir ins23irations flow to us and make the self- 
ish and protected and tenderly-bred person strong 
for his duty, wise in counsel, skilful in action, com- 
petent to rule, willing to obey. 

I delight in tracing these wonderful powers, the 
electricity and gravity of the human world. The 
power of persistence, of enduring defeat and of 
gaining victory by defeats, is one of these forces 
which never loses its charm. The power of a man 
increases steadily by continuance in one direction. 
He becomes acquainted with the resistances, and 
with his own tools ; increases his skill and strengiih 
and learns the favorable moments and favorable 
accidents. He is his own apprentice, and more 
time gives a great addition of power, just as a fall- 
ing body acquires momentum with every foot of 
the fall. Hov/ we prize a good continuer! I 
knew a manufacturer who found his property in- 
vested in chemical works which were depreciating 
in value. He undertook the charge of them him- 
self, began at the beginning, learned chemistry and 
acquainted himself with all the conditions of the 
manufacture. His friends dissuaded him, advised 
him to give up the work, which was not suited to 
the country. Why throw good money after bad? 
But he persisted, and after many years succeedec? 
in his production of the right article for commerce^ 



PERPETUAL FORCES. 81 

brouglit up the stock of his mills to par, and then 
sold out his interest, having accomplished the re- 
form that was required. 

In each the talent is the perception of an order 
and series in the department he deals with, — of 
an order and series which pre-existed in nature, 
and which this mind sees and conforms to. The 
geometer shows us the true order in figures; the 
painter in laws of color; the dancer in grace. 
Bonaparte, with his celerity of combination, mute, 
unfathomable, reads the geography of Europe as if 
liis eyes were telescopes; his will is an immense 
battery discharging irresistible volleys of power 
always at the right point in the right time. 

There was a story in the journals of a poor pris- 
oner in a Western police-court who was told he 
might be released if he would pay his fine. He 
had no money, he had no friends, but he took his 
flute out of his pocket and began to play, to the 
surprise, and, as it proved, to the delight of all the 
company ; the jurors waked up, the sheriff forgot 
his duty, the judge himself beat time, and the pris- 
oner was by general consent of court and officers 
allowed to go his way without any money. And I 
suppose, if he could have played loud enough, we 
here should have beat time, and the whole popula- 
tion of the globe would beat time, and consent that 
he should go without his fine. 



82 PERPETUAL FORCES. 

I knew a stupid young farmer, churlish, living 
only for his gains, and with whom the only inter- 
course you could have was to buy what he had to 
sell. One day I found his little boy of four years 
dragging about after him the prettiest little wooden 
cart, so neatly built, and with decorations too, and 
learned that Papa had made it ; that hidden deep 
in that thick skull was this gentle art and taste 
which the little fingers and caresses of his son had 
the power to draw out into day ; he was no peasant 
after all. So near to us is the flowering of Fine 
Art in the rudest population. See in a circle of 
school-girls one with no beauty, no special viva- 
city, — but she can so recite her adventures that 
she is never alone, but at night or at morning 
wherever she sits the inevitable circle gathers 
around her, willing prisoners of that wonderful 
memory and fancy and spirit of life. Would you 
know where to find her ? Listen for the laughter, 
follow the cheerful hum, see where is the rapt at- 
tention, and a pretty crowd all bright with one elec- 
tricity ; there in the centre of fellowship and joy is 
Scheherazade again. 

See how rich life is ; rich in private talents, each 
of which charms us in turn and seems the best. If 
we hear music we give up all to that ; if we fall in 
with a cricket-club and see the game masterly 
played, the best player is the first of men ; if we 



PERPETUAL FORCES. 83 

go to the regatta, we forget the bowler for the 
stroke oar ; and when the soldier comes home from 
the fight, he fills all eyes. But the soldier has the 
same admiration of the great parliamentary de- 
bater. And poetry and literature are disdainful of 
all these claims beside their own. Like the boy 
who thought in turn each one of the four seasons 
the best, and each of the three hundred and sixty- 
five days in the year the crowner. The sensibility 
is all. 

Every one knows what are the effects of music 
to put people in gay or mournful or martial mood. 
But these are the effects on dull subjects, and only 
the hint of its power on a keener sense. It is 
a stroke on a loose or tense cord. The story of 
Orpheus, of Arion, of the Arabian minstrel, are not 
fables, but experiments on the same iron at white 
heat. 

By this wondrous susceptibility to all the impres- 
sions of Nature the man finds himself the recepta- 
cle of celestial thoughts, of happy relations to all 
men. The imagination enriches him, as if there 
were no other ; the memory opens all her cabinets 
and archives ; Science her length and breadth ; 
Poetry her splendor and joy and the august circles 
of eternal law. These are means and stairs for new 
ascensions of the mind. But they are nowise im- 
poverished for any other mind, not tarnished, not 



84 PERPETUAL FORCES. 

breathed upon ; for the mighty Intellect did no\ 
stoop to him and become property, but he rose to it 
and followed its circuits. " It is ours while we use 
it, it is not ours when we do not use it." 

And so, one step higher, when he comes into the 
realm of sentiment and will. He sees the grand- 
eur of justice, the victory of love, the eternity that 
belongs to all moral nature. He does not then in- 
vent his sentiment or his act, but obeys a pre-exist- 
ing right which he sees. We arrive at virtue by 
taking its direction instead of imposing ours. 

The last revelation of intellect and of sentiment 
is that in a manner it severs the man from all other 
men ; makes known to him that the spiritual powers 
are sufficient to him if no other being existed ; 
that he is to deal absolutely in the world, as if he 
alone were a system and a state, and though all 
should perish could make aU anew. 

The forces are infinite. Every one has the might 
of all, for the secret of the world is that its energies 
are solidaires ; that they work together on a sys- 
tem of mutual aid, all for each and each for all ; 
that the strain made on one point bears on every 
arch and foundation of the structure. But if you 
wish to avail yourself of their might, and in like 
manner if you wish the force of the intellect, the 
force of the will, you must take their divine direc- 
tion, not they yours. Obedience alone gives the 



PERPETUAL FORCES. 85 

right to command. It is like the village operator 
who taps the telegraph-wire and surprises the se- 
crets of empires as they pass to the capital. So 
tiiis child of the dust throws himself by obedience 
into the circuit of the heavenly wisdom, and shares 
the secret of God. 

Thus is the world delivered into your hand, but 
on two conditions, — not for property, but for use, 
use according to the noble nature of the gifts ; and 
not for toys, not for self-indulgence. Things work 
to their ends, not to yours, and will certainly defeat 
any adventurer who fights against this ordination. 

The effort of men is to use them for private ends. 
They wish to pocket land and water and fire and 
air and all fruits of these, for property, and would 
like to have Aladdin's lamp to compel darkness, 
and iron-bound doors, and hostile armies, and lions 
and serpents to serve them like footmen. And they 
wish the same service from the spiritual faculties. 
A man has a rare mathematical talent, inviting him 
to the beautiful secrets of geometry, and wishes to 
clap a patent on it ; or has the fancy and inven- 
tion of a poet, and says, ' I will write a play that 
shall be repeated in London a hundred nights ; ' 
or a military genius, and instead of using that to 
defend his country, he says, ' I will fight the bat- 
tle so as to give me place and political considera- 
tion ; ' or Canning or Thurlow has a genius of de- 



86 PERPETUAL FORCES. 

bate, and says, ' I will know how with this weapon 
to defend the cause that will pay best and make me 
Chancellor or Foreign Secretary.' But this per- 
version is punished with instant loss of true wis* 
dom and real power. 

I find the survey of these cosmical powers a doc- 
trine of consolation in the dark hours of private or 
public fortune. It shows us the world alive, guided, 
incorruptible ; that its cannon cannot be stolen nor 
its virtues misapplied. It shows us the long Prov- 
idence, the safeguards of rectitude. It animates 
exertion ; it warns us out of that despair into which 
Saxon men are prone to fall, — out of an idolatry 
of forms, instead of working to simple ends, in the 
belief that Heaven always succors us in working for 
these. This world belongs to the energetical. It 
is a fagot of laws, and a true analysis of these laws, 
showing how immortal and how self-protecting they 
are, would be a wholesome lesson for every time 
and for this time. That band which ties them to- 
gether is unity, is universal good, saturating aU 
with one being and aim, so that each translates the 
other, is only the same spirit applied to new de- 
partments. Things are saturated with the moral 
law. There is no escape from it. Violets and 
grass preach it; rain and snow, wind and tides, 
every change, every cause in Nature is nothing \m\ 
a disguised missionary. 



PERPETUAL FORCES. 87 

All our political disasters grow as logically out 
of our attempts in the past to do without justice, as 
the sinking of some part of your house comes of de- 
fect in the foundation. One thing is plain ; a cer- 
tain personal virtue is essential to freedom ; and it 
begins to be doubtful whether our corruption in 
this country has not gone a little over the mark of 
safety, so that when canvassed we shall be found to 
be made up of a majority of reckless self-seekers. 
The divine knowledge has ebbed out of us and we 
do not know enough to be free. 

I hope better of the state. Half a man's wisdom 
goes with his courage. A boy who knows that a 
bully lives round the corner which he must pass 
on his daily way to school, is apt to take sinister 
views of streets and of school-education. And a 
sensitive politician suffers his ideas of the part New 
York or Pennsylvania or Ohio are to play in the 
future of the Union, to be fashioned by the elec- 
tion of rogues in some counties. But we must not 
gratify the rogues so deeply. There is a speedy 
limit to profligate politics. 

Fear disenchants life and the world. If I have 
not my own respect I am an impostor, not entitled 
to other men's, and had better creep into my grave. 
I admire the sentiment of Thoreau, who said, 
" Nothing is so much to be feared as fear ; God 
himself likes atheism better." For the world is a 



88 PERPETUAL FORCES. 

battle-ground; every principle is a war-note, and 
the most quiet and protected life is at any moment 
exposed to incidents which test your firmness. The 
illusion that strikes me as the masterpiece in that 
ring of illusions which our life is, is the timidity 
with which we assert our moral sentiment. We 
are made of it, the world is built by it, things en- 
dure as they share it ; all beauty, all health, all in- 
telligence exist by it; yet we shrink to speak of 
it or to range ourselves by its side. Nay, we pre- 
sume strength of him or them who deny it. Cit- 
ies go against it ; the college goes against it, the 
courts snatch at any precedent, at any vicious form 
of law to rule it out ; legislatures listen with appe- 
tite to declamations against it, and vote it down. 
Every new asserter of the right surprises us, like a 
man joining the church, and we hardly dare believe 
he is in earnest. 

What we do and suffer is in moments, but the 
cause of right for which we labor never dies, works 
in long periods, can afford many checks, gains by 
our defeats, and will know how to compensate our 
extremest sacrifice. Wrath and petulance may have 
their short success, but they quickly reach their 
brief date and decompose, whilst the massive might 
of ideas is irresistible at last. Whence does the 
knowledge come ? Where is the source of power ? 
The soul of God is poured into the world through 



PERPETUAL FORCES. 89 

the thoughts of men. The world stands on ideas, 
and not on iron or cotton ; and the iron of iron, the 
fire of fire, the ether and source of all the elements 
is moral force. As cloud on cloud, as snow on 
snow, as the bird on the air, and the planet on space 
in its flight, so do nations of men and their insti- 
tutions rest on thoughts. 



CHARACTER. 



Shun passion, fold the hands of thrift, 

Sit still, and Truth is near ; 

Suddenly it will uplift 

Your eyelids to the sphere : 
Wait a little, you shall see 
The portraiture of things to be. 



For what need I of book or priest 
Or Sibyl from the mummied East 
When every star is Bethlehem Star, >=^^ 
I count as many as there are 
Cinquefoils or violets in the grass, 

So many saints and saviours, 

So many high behaviours. 



CHARACTER.! 



Morals respects what men call goodness, that 
which all men agree to honor as justice, truth- 
speaking, good-will and good works. Morals re- 
spects the source or motive of this action. It is 
the science of substances, not of shows. It is the 
wJiat^ and not the how* It is that which all men 
profess to regard, and by their real respect for 
which recommend themselves to each other. 

There is this eternal advantage to morals, that, 
in the question between truth and goodness, the 
moral cause of the world lies behind all else in the 
mind. It was for good, it is to good, that all 
works. Surely it is not to prove or show the 
truth of things, — that sounds a little cold and 
scholastic, — no, it is for benefit, that all subsists. 
As we say in our modern politics, catching at last 
the language of morals, that the object of the State 
is -the greatest good of the greatest number, — so, 
the reason we must give for the existence of the 
world is, that it is for the benefit of all being. 
1 Reprinted from the North American Review of April, 1866. 



94 CHARACTER, 

Morals implies freedom and will. The will con- 
stitutes the man. He has his life in Nature, like a 
beast : but choice is born in him ; here is he that 
chooses ; here is the Declaration of Independence, 
the July Fourth of zoology and astronomy. He 
chooses, — as the rest of the creation does not. 
But will, pure and perceiving, is not wilfulness. 
When a man, through stubbornness, insists to do 
this or that, something absurd or whimsical, only 
because he will, he is weak ; he blows with his lips 
against the tempest, he dams the incoming ocean 
with his cane. It were an unspeakable calamity 
if any one should think he had the right to impose 
a private will on others. That is the part of a 
striker, an assassin. All violence, all that is dreary 
and repels, is not power but the absence of power. 

Morals is the direction of the will on universal 
ends. He is immoral who is acting to any private 
end. He is moral, — we say it with Marcus Aure- 
lius and with Kant, — whose aim or motive may 
become a universal rule, binding on all intelligent 
beings ; and with Vauvenargues, " the mercenary 
sacrifice of the public good to a private interest is 
the eternal stamp of vice." 

All the virtues are special directions of this mo- 
tive ; justice is the application of this good of the 
whole to the affairs of each one ; courage is con- 
tempt of danger in the determination to see this 



CHARACTER, 95 

good of the whole enacted ; love is delight in the 
preference of that benefit redounding to another 
over the securing of our own share ; humility is a 
sentiment of our insignificance when the benefit of 
the universe is considered. 

If from these external statements we seek to 
come a little nearer to the fact, our first experi- 
ences in moral as in intellectual nature force us to 
discriminate a universal mind, identical in all men. 
Certain biases, talents, executive skills, are special 
to each individual; but the high, contemplative, 
all-commanding vision, the sense of Right and 
Wrong, is alike in all. Its attributes are self-ex- 
istence, eternity, intuition and command. It is the 
mind of the mind. We belong to it, not it to us. 
It is in all men, and constitutes them men. In bad 
men it is dormant, as health is in men entranced or 
drunken ; but, however inoperative, it exists under- 
neath whatever vices and errors. The extreme 
simplicity of this intuition embarrasses every at- 
tempt at analysis. We can only mark, one by one, 
the perfections which it combines in every act. It 
admits of no appeal, looks to no superior essence. 
It is the reason of things. 

The antagonist nature is the individual, formed 
into a finite body of exact dimensions, with appe- 
tites which take from everybody else what they ap- 
propriate to themselves, and would enlist the entire 



96 CHARACTER. 

spiritual faculty of tlie individual, if it were pos- 
sible, in catering for them. On the perpetual con- 
flict between the dictate of this universal mind and 
the wishes and interests of the individual, the 
moral discipline of life is built. The one craves a 
private benefit, which the other requires him to re- 
nounce out of respect to the absolute good. Every 
hour puts the individual in a position where his 
wishes aim at something which the sentiment of 
duty forbids him to seek. He that speaks the 
truth executes no private function of an individual 
will, but the world utters a sound by his lips. He 
who doth a just action seeth therein nothing of his 
own, but an inconceivable nobleness attaches to it, 
because it is a dictate of the general mind. We 
have no idea of power so simple and so entire as 
this. It is the basis of thought, it is the basis of 
being. Compare all that we call ourselves, all our 
private and personal venture in the world, with 
this deep of moral nature in which we lie, and our 
private good becomes an impertinence, and we take 
part with hasty shame against ourselves : — 

" High instincts, before which our mortal nature 
Doth tremble like a guilty thing surprised, — 
Which, be they what they may, 
Are yet the fountain-light of all our day, 
Are yet the master-light of all our seeing, — 
Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make 
Our noisy years f eem moments in the being 



CHARACTER. 97 

Of the eternal silence, — truths that wake 
To perish never." 

The moral element invites man to great enlarge- 
ments, to find his satisfaction, not in particulars or 
events, but in the purpose and tendency ; not in 
bread, but in his right to his bread ; not in much 
corn or wool, but in its communication. 

Not by adding, then, does the moral sentiment 
help us ; no, but in quite another manner. It puts 
us in place. It centres, it concentrates us. It 
puts us at the heart of Nature, where we belong, in 
the cabinet of science and of causes, there where all 
the wires terminate which hold the world in mag- 
netic unity, and so converts us into universal be- 
ings. 

This wonderful sentiment, which endears itself 
as it is obeyed, seems to be the fountain of intel- 
lect ; for no talent gives the impression of sanity, 
if wanting this ; nay, it absorbs everything into 
itself. Truth, Power, Goodness, Beauty, are its 
varied names, — faces of one substance, the heart 
of all. Before it, what are persons, prophets, or 
seraphim but its passing agents, momentary rays 
of its light ? 

The moral sentiment is alone omnipotent. 
There is no labor or sacrifice to which it will not 
bring a man, and which it will not make easy. 
Thus there is no man who will bargain to sell his 

VOL. X. 7 



98 CHARACTER. 

life, say at the end of a year, for a million or ten 
millions of gold dollars in hand, or for any tempo- 
rary pleasures, or for any rank, as of peer or prince ; 
but many a man who does not hesitate to lay down 
his life for the sake of a truth, or in the cause of 
his country, or to save his son or his friend. And 
under the action of this sentiment of the Right, 
his heart and mind expand above himself, and 
above Nature. 

Though Love repine, and Reason chafe, 
There came a voice without reply, — 
" 'T is man's perdition to be safe, 

When for the truth he ought to die." 

Such is the difference of the action of the heart 
within and of the senses without. One is enthusi- 
asm, and the other more or less amounts of horse- 
power. 

Devout men, in the endeavor to express their 
convictions, have used different images to suggest 
this latent force ; as, the light, the seed, the Spirit, 
the Holy Ghost, the Comforter, the Daemon, the 
still, small voice, etc., — all indicating its power 
and its latency. It is serenely above all mediation. 
In all ages, to all men, it saith, / am ; and he who 
hears it feels the impiety of wandering from this 
revelation to any record or to any rival. The poor 
Jews of the wilderness cried : " Let not the Lord 
speak to us; let Moses speak to us." But the 



CHARACTER. 99 

simple and sincere soul makes the contrary prayer : 
* Let no intruder come between thee and me r deal 
Thou with me ; let me know it is thy will, and I 
ask no more.' The excellence of Jesus, and of 
every true teacher, is, that he affirms the Divinity 
in him and in us, — not thrusts himself between it 
and us. It would instantly indispose us to any 
person claiming to speak for the Author of Nature, 
the setting forth any fact or law which we did not 
find in our consciousness. We should say with 
Heraclitus : " Come into this smoky cabin ; God is 
here also : approve yourself to him." 

We affirm that in all men is this majestic per- 
ception and command ; that it is the presence of 
the Eternal in each perishing man ; that it dis- 
tances and degrades all statements of whatever 
saints, heroes, poets, as obscure and confused stam- 
merings before its silent revelation. They report 
the truth. It is the truth. When I think of Rea- 
son, of Truth, of Virtue, I cannot conceive them 
as lodged in your soul and lodged in my soul, but 
that you and I and all souls are lodged in that ; 
and I may easily speak of that adorable nature, 
there where only I behold it in my dim experiences, 
in such terms as shall seem to the frivolous, who 
dare not fathom their consciousness, as profane. 
How is a man a man ? How can he exist to weave 
relations of joy and virtue with other souls, but 

Lore 



100 CHARACTER. 

because he is inviolable, anchored at the centre of 
Truth and Being ? In the ever-returning hour of 
reflection, he says : ' I stand here glad at heart of 
all the sympathies I can awaken and share, cloth- 
ing myself with them as with a garment of shelter 
and beauty, and yet knowing that it is not in the 
power of all who surround me to take from me the 
smallest thread I call mine. If all things are taken 
away, I have still all things in my relation to the 
Eternal/ 

We pretend not to define the way of its access to 
the private heart. It passes understanding. There 
was a time when Christianity existed in one child. 
But if the child had been kiUed by Herod, would 
the element have been lost ? God sends his mes- 
sage, if not by one, then quite as well by another. 
When the Master of the Universe has ends to ful- 
fill, he impresses his will on the structure of minds. 

The Divine Mind imparts itself to the single 
person : his whole duty is to this rule and teaching. 
The aid which others give us is like that of the 
mother to the child, — temporary, gestative, a 
short period of lactation, a nurse's or a governess's 
care ; but on his arrival at a certain maturity, it 
ceases, and would be hurtful and ridiculous if pro- 
longed. Slowly the body comes to the use of its 
organs ; slowly the soul unfolds itself in the new 
man. It is partial at first, and honors only some 



CHARACTER. 101 

one or some few truths. In its companions it sees 
other truths honored, and successively finds their 
foundation also in itself. Then it cuts the cord, 
and no longer believes " because of thy saying," 
but because it has recognized them in itself. 

The Divine Mind imparts itself to the single 
person : but it is also true that men act powerfully 
on us. There are men who astonish and delight, 
men who instruct and guide. Some men's words 
I remember so well that I must often use them to 
express my thought. Yes, because I perceive that 
we have heard the same truth, but they have heard 
it better. That is only to say, there is degree and 
gradation throughout Nature ; and the Deity does 
not break his firm laws in respect to imparting 
truth, more than in imparting material heat and 
light. Men appear from time to time who receive 
with more purity and fulness these high communi- 
cations. But it is only as fast as this hearing from 
another is authorized by its consent with his own, 
that it is pure and safe to each ; and all receiving 
from abroad must be controlled by this immense 
reservation. 

It happens now and then, in the ages, that a 
soul is born which has no weakness of self, which 
offers no impediment to the Divine Spirit, which 
comes down into Nature as if only for the benefit 
of souls, and all its thoughts are perceptions of 



102 CHARACTER. 

tilings as they are, without any infirmity of earth. 
Such souls are as the apparition of gods among 
men, and simply by their presence pass judgment 
on them. Men are forced by their own self-respect 
to give them a certain attention. Evil men shrink 
and pay involuntary homage by hiding or apologiz- 
ing for their action. 

When a man is born with a profound moral sen- 
timent, preferring truth, justice and the serving of 
all men to any honors or any gain, men readily feel 
the superiorit}^ They who deal with him are ele- 
vated with joy and hope ; he lights up the house or 
the landscape in which he stands. His actions are 
poetic and miraculous in their eyes. In his pres- 
ence, or within his influence, every one believes in 
the immortality of the soul. They feel that the 
invisible world sympathizes with him. The Ara- 
bians delight in expressing the sympathy of the un- 
seen world with holy men. 

When Omar prayed and loved, 

Where Syrian waters roll, 
Aloft the ninth heaven glowed and moved 

To the tread of the jubilant soul. 

A chief event of life is the day in which we have 
encountered a mind that startled us by its large 
scope. I am in the habit of thinking, — not, I hope, 
out of a partial experience, but confirmed by what 
I notice in many lives, — that to every serioua 



CHARACTER. 103 

mind Providence sends from time to time five or 
six or seven teachers who are of the first importance 
to him in the lessons they have to impart. The 
highest of these not so much give particular knowl- 
edge, as they elevate by sentiment and by their 
habitual gTandeur of view. 

Great men serve us as insurrections do in bad 
governments. The world would run into endless 
routine, and forms incrust forms, till the life was 
gone. But the perpetual supply of new genius 
shocks us with thrills of life, and recalls us to prin- 
ciples. Lucifer's wager in the old drama was, 
'' There is no steadfast man on earth." He is very 
rare. " A man is already of consequence in the 
world when it is known that we can implicitly rely 
on him." See how one noble person dwarfs a whole 
nation of underlings. This steadfastness we indi- 
cate when we praise character. 

Character denotes habitual self-possession, habit- 
ual regard to interior and constitutional motives, 
a balance not to be overset or easily disturbed by 
outward events and opinion, and by implication 
points to the source of right motive. We some- 
times employ the word to express the strong and 
consistent will of men of mixed motive, but, when 
nsed with emphasis, it points to what no events can 
change, that is, a will built on the reason of things. 
Such souls do not come in troops : oftenest appear 



104 CHARACTER. 

solitary, like a general without his command, be- 
cause those who can understand and uphold such 
appear rarely, not many, perhaps not one, in a gen- 
eration. And the memory and tradition of such 
a leader is preserved in some strange way by 
those who only half understand him, until a true 
disciple comes, who apprehends and interprets every 
word. 

The sentiment never stops in pure vision, but 
will be enacted. It affirms not only its truth, but 
its supremacy. It is not only insight, as science, 
as fancy, as imagination is ; or an entertainment, 
as friendship and poetry are ; but it is a sovereign 
rule : and the acts which it suggests — as when it 
impels a man to go forth and impart it to other 
men, or sets him on some asceticism or some prac- 
tice of self-examination to hold him to obedience, 
or some zeal to unite men to abate some nuisance, 
or establish some reform or charity which it com- 
mands — are the homage we render to this senti- 
ment, as com]3ared with the lower regard we pay to 
other thoughts : and the private or social practices 
we establish in its honor we call religion. 

The sentiment, of course, is the judge and meas- 
ure of every expression of it, — measures Judaism, 
Stoicism, Christianity, Buddhism, or whatever 
philanthropy, or politics, or saint, or seer pretends 
to speak in its name. The religions we call false 



CHARACTER. 105 

were once true. They also were affirmations of the 
conscience correcting the evil customs of their times. 
The populace drag down the gods to their own 
level, and give them their egotism ; whilst in Na- 
ture is none at all, God keeping out of sight, and 
known only as pure law, though resistless. Cha- 
teaubriand said, with some irreverence of phrase. If 
God made man in his image, man has paid him 
well back. " Si Dieu a fait Vhomme a son imac/e, 
Vhomme Va bien rendu.^^ Every nation is de- 
graded by the goblins it worships instead of this 
Deity. The Dionysia and Saturnalia of Greece 
and Rome, the human sacrifice of the Druids, the 
Sradda of Hindoos, the Purgatory, the Indulgences, 
and the Inquisition of Popery, the vindictive my- 
thology of Calvinism, are examples of this perver- 
sion. 

Every particular instruction is speedily embodied 
in a ritual, is accommodated to humble and gross 
minds, and corrupted. The moral sentiment is the 
perpetual critic on these forms, thundering its pro- 
test, sometimes in earnest and lofty rebuke ; but 
sometimes also it is the source, in natures less pure, 
of sneers and flippant jokes of common people, who 
feel that the forms and dogmas are not true for 
them, though they do not see where the error lies. 

The religion of one age is the literary entertain- 
ment of the next, We use in our idlest poetry and 



106 CHARACTER. 

discourse the words Jove, Neptune, Mercury, as 
mere colors, and can hardly believe that they had 
to the lively Greek the anxious meaning which, in 
our towns, is given and received in churches when 
our religious names are used : and we read with 
surprise the horror of Athens when, one morning, 
the statues of Mercury in the temples were found 
broken, and the like consternation was in the. city 
as if, in Boston, all the Orthodox churches should 
be burned in one night. 

The greatest dominion will be to the deepest 
thought. The establishment of Christianity in the 
world does not rest on any miracle but the miracle 
of being the broadest and most humane doctrine. 
Christianity was once a schism and protest against 
the impieties of the time, which had originally been 
protests against earlier impieties, but had lost their 
truth. Varnhagen von Ense, writing in Prussia 
in 1848, says : " The Gospels belong to the most 
aggressive writings. No leaf thereof could attain 
the liberty of being printed (in Berlin) to-day. 
What Mirabeaus, Rousseaus, Diderots, Fichtes, 
Heines, and many another heretic, one can detect 
therein ! " 

But before it was yet a national religion it was 
alloyed, and, in the hands of hot Africans, of luxu. 
rious Byzantines, of fierce Gauls, its creeds were 
tainted with their barbarism. In Holland, in Eng 



CHARACTER. 107 

land, in Scotland, it felt the national narrowness. 
How unlike our habitual turn of thought was that 
of the last century in this country ! Our ancestors 
spoke continually of angels and archangels with 
the same good faith as they would have spoken of 
their own parents or their late minister. Now the 
words pale, are rhetoric, and all credence is gone. 
Our horizon is not far, say one generation, or thirty 
years : we all see so much. The older see two gen- 
erations, or sixty years. But what has been run- 
ning on through three horizons, or ninety years, 
looks to all the world like a law of Nature, and 
't is an impiety to doubt. Thus, 't is incredible to 
us, if we look into the religious books of our grand- 
fathers, how they held themselves in such a pinfold. 
But why not ? As far as they could see, through 
two or three horizons, nothing but ministers and 
ministers. Calvinism was one and the same thing 
in Geneva, in Scotland, in Old and New England. 
If there was a wedding, they had a sermon ; if a 
funeral, then a sermon ; if a war, or small-pox, or 
a comet, or canker-worms, or a deacon died, — 
still a sermon : Nature was a pulpit ; the church- 
warden or tithing-man was a petty persecutor ; the 
presbytery, a tyrant ; and in many a house in coun- 
try places the poor children found seven sabbaths 
in a week. Fifty or a hundred years ago, prayers 
Vv'ere said, morning and evening, in all families ; 



108 CHARACTER. 

grace was said at table ; an exact observance of 
the Sunday was kept in the houses of laymen as 
of clergymen. And one sees with some pain the 
disuse of rites so charged with humanity and aspi- 
ration. But it by no means follows, because those 
offices are much disused, that the men and 
women are irreligious ; certainly not that they 
have less integrit}' or sentiment, but only, let us 
hope, that they see that they can omit the form 
without loss of real ground ; perhaps that they find 
some violence, some cramping of their freedom of 
thought, in the constant recurrence of the form. 

So of the changed position and manners of the 
clergy. They have dropped, with the sacerdotal 
garb and manners of the last century, many doc- 
trines and practices once esteemed indispensable to 
their order. But the distinctions of the true clergy- 
man are not less decisive. Men ask now, '' Is he 
serious ? Is he a sincere man, who lives as he 
teaches? Is he a benefactor?" So far the relig- 
ion is now where it should be. Persons are discrim- 
inated as honest, as veracious, as illuminated, as 
helpful, as having public and universal regards, or 
otherwise ; — are discriminated according to their 
aims, and not by these ritualities. 

The changes are inevitable ; the new age cannot 
see with the eyes of the last. But the* change is in 
what is superficial ; the principles are immortal, 



CHARACTER. 109 

and the rally on the principle must arrive as people 
become intellectual. I consider theology to be the 
rhetoric of morals. The mind of this age has fallen 
away from theology to morals. I conceive it an 
advance. I suspect, that, when the theology was 
most florid and dogmatic, it was the barbarism of 
the people, and that, in that very time, the best 
men also fell away from theology, and rested in 
morals. I think that all the dogmas rest on mor- 
als, and that it is only a question of youth or ma- 
turity, of more or less fancy in the recipient ; that 
the stern determination to do justly, to speak the 
truth, to be chaste and humble, was substantially 
the same, whether under a self-respect, or under a 
vow made on the knees at the shrine of Madonna. 

When once Selden had said that the priests 
seemed to him to be baptizing their own fingers, 
the rite of baptism was getting late in the world. 
Or when once it is perceived that the English 
missionaries in India put obstacles in the way of 
schools, (as is alleged,) — do not wish to enlighten 
but to Christianize the Hindoos, — it is seen at 
once how wide of Christ is English Christianity. 

Mankind at large always resemble frivolous chil- 
dren : they are impatient of thought, and wish to 
be amused. Truth is too simple for us ; we do not 
like those who unmask our illusions. Fontenelle 
said : " If the Deity should lay bare to the eyes of 



110 CHARACTER, 

men the secret system of Nature, the causes by 
which all the astronomic results are effected, and 
they finding no magic, no mystic numbers, no fatal- 
ities, but the greatest simplicity, I am persuaded 
they would not be able to suppress a feeling of 
mortification, and would exclaim, with disappoint- 
ment, ' Is that aU ? ' " And so we paint over the 
bareness of ethics with the quaint grotesques of 
theology. 

We boast the triumph of Christianity over Pa- 
ganism, meaning the victory of the spirit over the 
senses ; but Paganism hides itself in the uniform 
of the Church. Paganism has only taken the oath 
of allegiance, taken the cross, but is Paganism still, 
outvotes the true men by millions of majority, car- 
ries the bag, spends the treasure, writes the tracts, 
elects the minister, and persecutes the true believer. 

There is a certain secular progress of opinion, 
which, in civil countries, reaches everybody. One 
service which this age has rendered is, to make 
the life and wisdom of every past man accessible 
and available to all. Socrates and Marcus Aurelius 
are allowed to be saints ; Mahomet is no longer 
accursed ; Yoltaire is no longer a scarecrow ; Spi- 
noza has come to be revered. " The time will come," 
says Varnhagen von Ense, "when we shall treat 
the jokes and sallies against the myths and church- 
rituals of Christianity — say the sarcasms of Vol 



CHARACTER. Ill 

taire, Frederic the Great, and D' Alembert — good- 
naturedly and without offence : since, at bottom, 
those men mean honestly, their polemics proceed 
out of a religious striving, and what Christ meant 
and willed is in essence more with them than with 
their opponents, who only wear and misrepresent 

the name of Christ Voltaire was an apostle 

of Christian ideas ; only the names were hostile to 
him, and he never knew it otherwise. He was like 
the son of the vine-dresser in the Gospel, who said 
No, and went ; the other said Yea, and went not. 
These men preached the true God, — Him whom 
men serve by justice and uprightness; but they 
called themselves atheists." 

When the highest conceptions, the lessons of re- 
ligion, are imported, the nation is not culminating, 
has not genius, but is servile. A true nation loves 
its vernacular tongue. A completed nation will not 
import its religion. Duty grows everywhere, like 
children, like grass ; and we need not go to Europe 
or to Asia to learn it. I am not sure that the Eng- 
lish religion is not all quoted. Even the Jeremy 
Taylors, Fullers, George Herberts, steeped, all of 
them, in Church traditions, are only using their fine 
fancy to emblazon their memory. 'T is Judaea, not 
England, which is the ground. So with the mor- 
dant Calvinism of Scotland and America. But this 
quoting distances and disables them : since with 



112 CHARACTER. 

every repeater something of creative force is lost, aa 
we feel when we go back to each original moralist. 
Pythagoras, Socrates, the Stoics, the Hindoo, Beh- 
men, George Fox, — these speak originally; and 
how many sentences and books we owe to unknown 
authors, — to writers who were not careful to set 
down name or date or titles or cities or postmarks 
in these illuminations ! 

We, in our turn, want power to drive the ponder- 
ous State. The constitution and law in America 
must be written on ethical principles, so that the en- 
tire power of the spiritual world can be enlisted to 
hold the loyalty of the citizen, and to repel every en- 
emy as by force of Nature. The laws of old empires 
stood on the religious convictions. Now that their 
religions are outgrown, the empires lack strength. 
Romanism in Europe does not represent the real 
opinion of enlightened men. The Lutheran Church 
does not represent in Germany the opinions of the 
universities. In England, the gentlemen, the jour- 
nals, and now, at last, churchmen and bishops, have 
fallen away from the Anglican Church. And in 
America, where are no legal ties to churches, the 
looseness appears dangerous. 

Our religion has got on as far as Unitarianism. 
But all the forms grow pale. The walls of the tem- 
ple are wasted and thin, and, at last, only a film of 
whitewash, because the mind of our culture has aL 



CHARACTER. 113 

ready left our liturgies behind. " Every age," says 
V^arnhagen, "has another sieve for the religious 
tradition, and will sift it out again. Something is 
continually lost by this treatment, which posterity 
cannot recover." 

But it is a capital truth that Nature, moral as 
well as material, is always equal to herself. Ideas 
always generate enthusiasm. The creed, the leg- 
end, forms of worship, swiftly decay. Morals is the 
incorruptible essence, very heedless in its richness 
of any past teacher or witness, heedless of their 
lives and fortunes. It does not ask whether you 
are wrong or right in your anecdotes of them ; but 
it is all in all how you stand to your own tribunal. 

The lines of the religious sects are very shifting ; 
their platforms unstable ; the whole science of the- 
ology of great uncertainty, and resting very much 
on the opinions of who may chance to be the leading 
doctors of Oxford or Edinburgh, of Princeton or 
Cambridge, to-day. No man can tell what relig- 
ious revolutions await us in the next years ; and the 
education in the divinity colleges may well hesi- 
tate and vary. But the science of ethics has no 
mutation ; and whoever feels any love or skill for 
ethical studies may safely lay out all his strength 
and genius in working in that mine. The pulpit 
may shake, but this platform will not. All the vic- 
tories of reliG:ion belono^ to the moral sentiment 



114 CHARACTER. 

Some poor soul beheld the Law blazing through 
such impediments as he had, and yielded himself to 
humility and joy. What was gained by being told 
that it was justification by faith ? 

The Church, in its ardor for beloved persons, 
clings to the miraculous, in the vulgar sense, which 
has even an immoral tendency, as one sees in 
Greek, Indian and Catholic legends, which are used 
to gloze every crime. The soul, penetrated with 
the beatitude which pours into it on all sides, asks 
no interpositions, no new laws, — the old are good 
enough for it, — finds in every cart-path of labor 
ways to heaven, and the humblest lot exalted. Men 
wiU learn to put back the emphasis peremptorily 
on pure morals, always the same, not subject to 
doubtful interpretation, with no sale of indulgences 
no massacre of heretics, no female slaves, no disfran- 
chisement of woman, no stigma on race ; to make 
morals the absolute test, and so uncover and drive 
out the false religions. There is no vice that has 
not skulked behind them. It is only yesterday that 
our American churches, so long silent on Slavery, 
and notoriously hostile to the Abolitionist, wheeled 
into line for Emancipation. 

I am far from accepting the opinion that the rev- 
elations of the moral sentiment are insufficient, as if 
it furnished a rule only, and not the spirit by which 
the rule is animated. For I include in these, of 



CHARACTER. 



115 



course, the history of Jesus, as well as those of 
every divine soul which in any place or time deliv- 
ered any grand lesson to humanity ; and I find in 
the eminent experiences in all times a substantial 
agreement. The sentiment itself teaches unity of 
source, and disowns every superiority other than of 
deeper truth. Jesus has immense claims on the grat- 
itude of mankind, and knew how to guard the in- 
tegrity of his brother's soul from himself also ; but, 
in his disciples, admiration of him runs away with 
their reverence for the human soul, and they ham- 
per us with limitations of person and text. Every 
exaggeration of these is a violation of the soul's 
right, and inclines the manly reader to lay down 
the New Testament, to take up the Pagan philoso- 
phers. It is not that the Upanishads or the Max- 
ims of Antoninus are better, but that they do not 
invade his freedom ; because they are only sugges- 
tions, whilst the other adds the inadmissible claim 
of positive authority, — of an external command, 
where command cannot be. This is the secret of 
the mischievous result that, in every period of in- 
tellectual expansion, the Church ceases to draw 
into its clergy those who best belong there, the lar- 
gest and freest minds, and that in its most liberal 
forms, when such minds enter it, they are coldly 
received, and find themselves out of place. This 
charm in the Pagan moralists, of suggestion, thQ 



116 CHARACTER. 

charm of poetry, of mere truth, (easily disengaged 
from their historical accidents which nobody wishes 
to force on us,) the New Testament loses by its 
connection with a church. Mankind cannot long 
suffer this loss, and the office of this age is to put 
all these writings on the eternal footing of equality 
of origin in the instincts of the human mind. It 
is certain that each inspired master will gain in- 
stantly by the separation from the idolatry of ages. 
To their great honor, the simple and free minds 
among our clergy have not resisted the voice of 
Nature and the advanced perceptions of the mind ; 
and every church divides itself into a liberal and 
expectant class, on one side, and an unwilling and 
conservative class on the other. As it stands with 
us now, a few clergymen, with a more theological 
cast of mind, retain the traditions, but they carry 
them quietly. In general discourse, they are never 
obtruded. If the clergyman should travel in France, 
in England, in Italy, he might leave them locked 
up in the same closet with his " occasional sermons " 
at home, and, if he did not return, would never 
think to send for them. The orthodox clergymen 
hold a little firmer to theirs, as Calvinism has a 
more tenacious vitality ; but that is doomed also, 
and will only die last ; for Calvinism rushes to be 
Unitarianism, as Unitarianism rushes to be pure 
Theism. 



CHARACTER, 117 

But the inspirations are never withdrawn. In 
the worst times, men of organic virtue are born, — 
men and women of native integrity, and indiffer- 
ently in high and low conditions. There will al= 
ways be a class of imaginative youths, whom poetry, 
whom the love of beauty, lead to the adoration of 
the moral sentiment, and these will provide it with 
new historic forms and songs. Religion is as inex- 
pugnable as the use of lamps, or of wells, or of 
chimneys. We must have days and temples and 
teachers. The Sunday is the core of our civiliza- 
tion, dedicated to thought and reverence. It in- 
vites to the noblest solitude and the noblest society, 
to whatever means and aids of spiritual refresh- 
ment. Men may well come together to kindle each 
other to virtuous living. Confucius said, " If in 
the morning I hear of the right way, and in the 
evening die, I can be happy." 

The churches already indicate the new spirit in 
adding to the perennial office of teaching, benefi- 
cent activities, — as in creating hospitals, ragged 
schools, offices of employment for the poor, appoint- 
ing almoners to the helpless, guardians of found- 
lings and orphans. The power that in other times 
inspired crusades, or the colonization of New Eng- 
land, or the modern revivals, flies to the help of the 
deaf-mute and the blind, to the education of the 
sailor and the vagabond boy, to the reform of con- 



118 CHARACTER. 

victs and harlots, — as the war created the Hilton 
Head and Charleston missions, the Sanitary Com- 
mission, the nurses and teachers at Washington. 

In the present tendency of our society, in the 
new importance of the individual, when thrones are 
crumbling and presidents and governors are forced 
every moment to remember their constituencies ; 
when counties and towns are resisting centraliza- 
tion, and the individual voter his party, — society 
is threatened with actual granulation, religious as 
well as political. How many people are there in 
Boston? Some two hundred thousand. Well, 
then so tnany sects. Of course each poor soul loses 
all his old stays ; no bishop watches him, no con- 
fessor reports that he has neglected the confessional, 
no class-leader admonishes him of absences, no 
fagot, no penance, no fine, no re Duke. Is not this 
wrong ? is not this dangerous ? 'T is not wrong, 
but the law of growth. It is not dangerous, any 
more than the mother's withdrawing her hands 
from the tottering babe, at his first walk across the 
nursery-floor : the child fears and cries, but achieves 
the feat, instantly tries it again, and never wishes 
to be assisted more. And this infant soul must 
learn to walk alone. At first he is forlorn, home- 
less ; but this rude stripping him of all support 
drives him inward, and he finds himself unhurt ; he 



CHARACTER. 119 

finds himself face to face with the majestic Presence, 
reads the original of the Ten Commandments, the 
original of Gospels and Epistles ; nay, his narrow- 
chapel expands to the blue cathedral of the sky, 
where he 

" Looks in and sees each blissful deity, 
Where he before the thunderous throne doth lie." 

To nations or to individuals the progress of opin- 
ion is not a loss of moral restraint, but simply a 
change from coarser to finer checks. No evil can 
come from reform which a deeper thought will not 
correct. If there is any tendency in national ex- 
pansion to form character, religion will not be a 
loser. There is a fear that pure truth, pure morals, 
will not make a religion for the affections. When- 
ever the sublimities of character shall be incarnated 
in a man, we may rely that awe and love and insa- 
tiable curiosity will follow his steps. Character is 
the habit of action from the permanent vision of 
truth. It carries a superiority to all the accidents 
of life. It compels right relation to every other 
man, — domesticates itself with strangers and ene- 
mies. *'* But I, father," says the wise Prahlada, in 
the Vishnu Pur ana, " know neither friends nor foes, 
for I behold Kesava in all beings as in my own 
soul." It confers perpetual insight. It sees that 
a man's friends and his foes are of his own house- 
hold, of his own person. What would it avail me. 



120 CHARACTER. 

if I could destroy my enemies ? There would be 
as many to-morrow. That which I hate and fear 
is really in myself, and no knife is long enough to 
reach to its heart. Confucius said one day to Ke 
Kang : " Sir, in carrying on your government, why 
should you use killing at all? Let your evinced 
desires be for what is good, and the people will be 
good. The grass must bend, when the wind blows 
across it." Ke Kang, distressed about the number 
of thieves in the state, inquired of Confucius how 
to do away with them. Confucius said, " If you, 
sir, were not covetous, although you should reward 
them to do it, they would not steal." 

Its methods are subtle, it works without means. 
It indulges no enmity against any, knowing, with 
Prahlada that " the suppression of malignant feel- 
ing is itself a reward." The more reason, the less 
government. In a sensible family, nobody ever 
hears the words " shall " and " sha'n't ; " nobody 
commands, and nobody obeys, but aU conspire and 
joyfully co-operate. Take off the roofs of hundreds 
of happy houses, and you shall see this order with- 
out ruler, and the like in every intelligent and moral 
society. Command is exceptional, and marks some 
break in the link of reason ; as the electricity goes 
round the world without a spark or a sound, until 
there is a break in the wire or the water chain. 
Swedenborg said, that, " in the spiritual world, when 



CIIARA CTER. 121 

one wishes to rule, or despises others, he is thrust out 
of doors." Goethe, in discussing the characters 
in " Willielm Meister," maintained his belief that 
" pure loveliness and right good-will are the highest 
manly prerogatives, before which all energetic hero- 
ism, with its lustre and renown, must recede." In 
perfect accord with this, Henry James affirms, that 
"to give the feminine element in life its hard- 
earned but eternal supremacy over the masculine 
has been the secret inspiration of all past history," 
There is no end to the sufficiency of character. 
It can afford to wait ; it can do without what is 
called success ; it cannot but succeed. To a well- 
principled man existence is victory. He defends 
himself against failure in his main design by mak- 
ing every inch of the road to it pleasant. There is 
no trifle, and no obscurity to him : he feels the im- 
mensity of the chain whose last link he holds in 
his hand, and is led by it. Having nothing, this 
spirit hath all. It asks, with Marcus Aurelius, 
" What matter by whom the good is done ? " It 
extols humility, — by every self-abasement lifted 
higher in the scale of being. It makes no stipula^ 
tions for earthly felicity, — does not ask, in the ab- 
soluteness of its trust, even for the assurance of 
continued life. 



EDUCATION. 



With the key of the secret he marches faster 
From strength to strength, and for night brings day, 
While classes or tribes too weak to master 
The flowing conditions of life, give way. 



EDUCATION. 



A NEW degree of intellectaal power seems cheap 
at any price. The use of the world is that man 
may learn its laws. And the human race have 
wisely signified their sense of this, by calling wealth, 
means, - Man being the end. Language is always 



Wise. 



Therefore I praise New England because it is the 
country in the world where is the freest expendi- 
ture for education. We have already taken, at the 
planting of the Colonies, (for aught I know for the 
first time in the world,) the initial step, which for 
its importance might have been resisted as the most 
radical of revolutions, thus deciding at the start the 
destiny of this country,- this, namely, that the poor 
man, whom the law does not allow to take an ear 
of com when starving, nor a pair of shoes for his 
freezing feet, is aUowed to put his hand into the 
pocket of the rich, and say. You shall educate me, 
not as you wUl, but as I wiU : not alone in the ele- 
ments, but, by further provision, in the languages, 
in sciences, in the useful and in elegant arts. The 



126 EDUCATION. 

child shall be taken up by the State, and taught, 
at the public cost, the rudiments of knowledge, and, 
at last, the ripest results of art and science. 

Humanly speaking, the school, the college, so- 
ciety, make the difference between men. All the 
fairy tales of Aladdin or the invisible Gyges or 
the talisman that opens kings' palaces or the en- 
chanted halls under-ground or in the sea, are only 
fictions to indicate the one miracle of intellectual 
enlargement. When a man stupid becomes a man 
inspired, when one and the same man passes out of 
the torpid into the perceiving state, leaves the din 
of trifles, the stupor of the senses, to enter into the 
quasi-omniscience of high thought, — up and down, 
around, all limits disappear. No horizon shuts 
down. He sees things in their causes, all facts in 
their connection. 

One of the problems of history is the beginning 
of civilization. The animals that accompany and 
serve man make no progress as races. Those called 
domestic are capable of learning of man a few 
tricks of utility or amusement, but they cannot com- 
municate the skill to their race. Each individual 
must be taught anew. The trained dog cannot 
train another dog. And Man himself in many 
races retains almost the unteachableness of the 
beast. For a thousand years the islands and for- 
ests of a great part of the world have been filled 



EDUCATION. 127 

with savages who made no steps of advance in art 
or skill beyond the necessity of being fed and 
warmed. Certain nations with a better brain and 
usually in more temperate climates, have made such 
progress as to compare with these as these compare 
with the bear and the wolf. 

Victory over things is the office of man. Of 
course, until it is accomplished, it is the war and in- 
sult of things over him. His continual tendency, 
his great danger, is to overlook the fact that the 
world is only his teacher, and the nature of sun and 
moon, plant and animal only means of arousing 
his interior activity. Enamored of their beauty, 
comforted by their convenience, he seeks them as 
ends, and fast loses sight of the fact that they have 
worse than no values, that they become noxious, 
when he becomes their slave. 

This apparatus of wants and faculties, this crav- 
ing body, whose organs ask all the elements and all 
the functions of Nature for their satisfaction, edu- 
cate the wondrous creature which they satisfy with 
light, with heat, with water, with wood, with bread, 
with wool. The necessities imposed by this most 
irritable and all-related texture have taught Man 
hunting, pasturage, agriculture, connnerce, weaving, 
joining, masonry, geometry, astronomy. Here is a 
world pierced and belted with natural laws, and 
fenced and planted with civil partitions and proper- 



128 EDUCATION. 

ties, wliicli all put new restraints on the young in- 
habitant. He too must come into this magic circle 
of relations, and know health and sickness, the 
fear of injury, the desire of external good, the 
charm of riches, the charm of power. The house- 
hold is a school of power. There, within the door, 
learn the tragi-comedy of human life. Here is the 
sincere thing, the wondrous composition for which 
day and night go round. In that routine are the 
sacred relations, the passions that bind and sever. 
Here is poverty and all the wisdom its hated neces- 
sities can teach, here labor drudges, here affections 
glow, here the secrets of character are told, the 
guards of man, the guards of woman, the compensa- 
tions which, like angels of justice, pay every debt : 
the opium of custom, whereof all drink and many 
go mad. Here is Economy, and Glee, and Hospi- 
tality, and Ceremony, and Frankness, and Calamity, 
and Death, and Hope. 

Every one has a trust of power, — every man, 
every boy a jurisdiction, whether it be over a cow 
or a rood of a potato-field, or a fleet of ships, or the 
laws of a state. And what activity the desire of 
power inspires ! What toils it sustains I How it 
sharpens the perceptions and stores the memory with 
facts. Thus a man may well spend many years of 
life in trade. It is a constant teaching of the laws 
of matter and of mind. No dollar of property can 



EDUCATION. 129 

be created without some direct communication with 
nature, and of course some acquisition of knowl- 
edge and practical force. It is a constant contest 
with the active faculties of men, a study of the is- 
sues of one and another course of action, an accu- 
mulation of power, and, if the higher faculties of 
the individual be from time to time quickened, he 
will gain wisdom and virtue from his business. 

As every wind draws music out of the ^olian 
harp, so doth every object in Nature draw music 
out of his mind. Is it not true that every landscape 
I behold, every friend I meet, every act I perform, 
every pain I suffer, leaves me a different being 
from that they found me ? That poverty, love, au- 
thority, anger, sickness, sorrow, success, all work 
actively upon our being and unlock for us the con- 
cealed faculties of the mind ? Whatever private 
or petty ends are frustrated, this end is always an- 
swered. Whatever the man does, or whatever be- 
falls him, opens another chamber in his soul, — 
that is, he has got a new feeling, a new thought, a 
new organ. Do we not see how amazingly for this 
end man is fitted to the world ? 

What leads him to science ? Why does he track 
in the midnight heaven a pure spark, a luminous 
patch wandering from age to age, but because he 
acquires thereby a majestic sense of power ; learn- 
ing that in his own constitution he can set the shin- 



130 EDUCATION. 

ing maze in order, and finding and carrying their 
law in his mind, can, as it were, see his simple 
idea realized up yonder in giddy distances and 
frightful periods of duration. If Newton come 
and first of men perceive that not alone certain 
bodies fall to the ground at a certain rate, but that 
all bodies in the Universe, the universe of bodies, 
fall always, and at one rate ; that every atom in 
nature draws to every other atom, — he extends 
the power of his mind not only over every cubic 
atom of his native planet, but he reports the condi- 
tion of millions of worlds which his eye never saw. 
And what is the charm which every ore, every new 
plant, every new fact touching winds, clouds, ocean 
currents, the secrets of chemical composition and 
decomposition possess for Humboldt ? What but 
that much revolving of similar facts in his mind 
has shown him that always the mind contains in 
its transparent chambers the means of classifying 
the most refractory phenomena, of depriving them 
of all casual and chaotic aspect, and subordinating 
them to a bright reason of its own, and so giving 
to man a sort of property, — yea, the very highest 
property in every district and particle of the globe. 
By the permanence of Nature, minds are trained 
alike, and made intelligible to each other. In our 
condition are the roots of language and communi- 
cation, and these instructions we never exhaust. 



EDUCATION. 131 

In some sort the end of life is that the man 
should take up the universe into himself, or out of 
that quarry leave nothing unrepresented. Yonder 
mountain must migrate into his mind. Yonder 
magnificent astronomy he is at last to import, fetch- 
ing away moon, and planet, solstice, period, comet 
and binal star, by comprehending their relation and 
law. Instead of the timid stripling he was, he is 
to be the stalwart Archimedes, Pythagoras, Colum- 
bus, Newton, of the physic, metaphysic and ethics 
of the design of the world. 

For truly the population of the globe has its 
origin in the aims which their existence is to serve ; 
and so with every portion of them. The truth 
takes flesh in forms that can express it ; and thus 
in history an idea always overhangs, like the moon, 
and rules the tide which rises simultaneously in all 
the souls of a generation. 

Whilst thus the world exists for the mind; 
whilst thus the man is ever invited inward into 
shining realms of knowledge and power by the 
shows of the world, which interpret to him the in- 
finitude of his own consciousness, — it becomes the 
office of a just education to awaken him to the 
knowledge of this fact. 

We learn nothing rightly until we learn the sym- 
bolical character of life. Day creeps after day, 
each full of facts, dull, strange, despised things, 



132 EDUCATION. 

that we cannot enough despise, — call heavy, pro- 
saic, and desert. The time we seek to kill : the 
attention it is elegant to divert from things around 
us. And presently the aroused intellect finds gold 
and gems in one of these scorned facts, — then finds 
that the day of facts is a rock of diamonds ; that a 
fact is an Epiphany of God. 

We have our theory of life, our religion, our 
philosophy; and the event of each moment, tha 
shower, the steamboat disaster, the passing of a 
beautiful face, the apoplexy of our neighbor, are 
all tests to try our theory, the approximate result 
we call truth, and reveal its defects. If I have re- 
nounced the search of truth, if I have come into 
the port of some pretending dogmatism, some new 
church or old church, some Schelling or Cousin, I 
have died to all use of these new events that are 
born out of prolific time into multitude of life every 
hour. I am as a bankrupt to whom brilliant oppor- 
tunities offer in vain. He has just foreclosed his 
freedom, tied his hands, locked himself up and 
given the key to another to keep. 

AYhen I see the doors by which God enters into 
the mind ; that there is no sot or fop, ruffian or 
pedant into whom thoughts do not enter by pas- 
sages which the individual never left open, I can 
expect any revolution in character. " I have hope," 
said the great Leibnitz, " that society may be re 



EDUCATION. 133 

formed, when I see how much education may be 
reformed." 

It is ominous, a presumption of crime, that this 
word Education has so cold, so hopeless a sound. 
A treatise on education, a convention for educa- 
tion, a lecture, a system, affects us with slight pa- 
ralysis and a certain yawning of the jaws. We 
are not encouraged when the law touches it with 
its finders. Education should be as broad as man. 
Whatever elements are in him that should foster 
and demonstrate. If he be dexterous, his tuition 
should make it appear ; if he be capable of divid- 
ing men by the trenchant sword of his thought, 
education should unsheathe and sharpen it ; if he 
is one to cement society by his all-reconciling affin- 
ities, oh ! hasten their action ! If he is jovial, if 
he is mercurial, if he is great-hearted, a cunning 
artificer, a strong commander, a potent ally, ingen- 
ious, useful, elegant, witty, prophet, diviner, — so- 
ciety has need of all these. The imagination must 
be addressed. Why always coast on the surface 
and never open the interior of nature, not by sci- 
ence, which is surface still, but by poetry ? Is not 
the Vast an element of the mind ? Yet what teach- 
ing, what book of this day appeals to the Vast ? 

Our culture has truckled to the times, — to the 
senses. It is not manworthy. If the vast and the 
spiritual are omitted, so are the practical and the 



134 EDUCATION. 

moral. It does not make us brave or free. We 
teach boys to be such men as we are. We do not 
teach them to aspire to be all they can. We do 
not give them a training as if we believed in their 
noble nature. We scarce educate their bodies. 
We do not train the eye and the hand. We exer- 
cise their understandings to the apprehension and 
comparison of some facts, to a skill in numbers, in 
words ; we aim to make accountants, attorneys, 
engineers ; but not to make able, earnest, great- 
hearted men. The great object of Education should 
be commensurate with the object of life. It should 
be a moral one ; to teach self -trust : to inspire the 
youthful man with an interest in himself; with a 
curiosity touching his own nature ; to acquaint him 
with the resources of his mind, and to teach him 
that there is all his strength, and to inflame him 
with a piety towards the Grand Mind in which he 
lives. Thus would education conspire with the Di- 
vine Providence. A man is a little thing whilst he 
works by and for himself, but, when he gives voice 
to the rules of love and justice, is godlike, his word 
is current in all countries ; and all men, though his 
enemies, are made his friends and obey it as their 
own. 

In affirming that the moral nature of man is 
the predominant element and should therefore be 
mainly consulted in the arrangements of a school, 



EDUCATION. 135 

I am very far from wishing that it should swallow 
up all the other instincts and faculties of man. It 
should be enthroned in his mind, but if it monopo- 
lize the man he is not yet sound, he does not yet 
know his wealth. He is in danger of becoming 
merely devout, and wearisome through the monot- 
ony of his thought. It is not less necessary that the 
intellectual and the active faculties should be nour- 
ished and matured. Let us apply to this subject 
the light of the same torch by which we have looked 
at all the phenomena of the time ; the infinitude, 
namely, of every man. Everything teaches that. 

One fact constitutes all my satisfaction, inspires 
all my trust, viz., this perpetual youth, which, as 
long as there is any good in us, we cannot get rid 
of. It is very certain that the coming age and 
the departing age seldom understand each other. 
The old man thinks the young man has no distinct 
purpose, for he could never get anything intelli 
gible and earnest out of him. Perhaps the young 
man does not think it worth his while to explain 
himself to so hard and inapprehensive a confessor. 
Let him be led up with a long-sighted forbearance, 
and let not the sallies of his petulance or folly be 
checked with disgust or indignation or despair. 

I call our system a system of despair, and I find 
all the correction, all the revolution that is needed 
and that the best spirits of this age promise, in 



136 EDUCATION. 

one word, in Hope. Nature, when she sends a new 
mind into the world, fills it beforehand with a de- 
sire for that which she wishes it to know and do. 
Let us wait and see what is this new creation, of 
what new organ the great Spirit had need when it 
incarnated this new Will. A new Adam in the 
garden, he is to name all the beasts in the field, all 
the gods in the sky. And jealous provision seems 
to have been made in his constitution that you 
shall not invade and contaminate him with the 
worn weeds of your language and opinions. The 
charm of life is this variety of genius, these con- 
trasts and flavors by which Heaven has modulated 
the identity of truth, and there is a perpetual hank- 
ering to violate this individuality, to warp his ways 
of thinking and behavior to resemble or reflect 
your thinking and behavior. A low self-love in 
the parent desires that his child should repeat his 
character and fortune ; an expectation which the 
child, if justice is done him, will nobly disappoint. 
By working on the theory that this resemblance ex- 
ists, we shall do what in us lies to defeat his proper 
promise and produce the ordinary and mediocre. I 
suffer whenever I see that common sight of a parent 
or senior imposing his opinion and way of think- 
ing and being on a young soul to which they are 
totally unfit. Cannot we let people be themselves, 
and enjoy life in their own way ? You are trying 
to make that man another you. One 's enough. 



EDUCATION. 137 

Or we sacrifice the genius of the pupil, the un- 
known possibilities of his nature, to a neat and safe 
uniformity, as the Turks whitewash the costly mo- 
saics of ancient art which the Greeks left on their 
temple walls. Kather let us have men whose man- 
hood is only the continuation of their boyhood, nat- 
ural characters still ; such are able and fertile for 
heroic action ; and not that sad spectacle with which 
we are too familiar, educated eyes in uneducated 
bodies. 

I like boys, the masters of the playground and 
of the street, — boys, who have the same liberal 
ticket of admission to all shops, factories, armories, 
town-meetings, caucuses, mobs, target-shootings, as 
flies have ; quite unsuspected, coming in as natu- 
rally as the janitor, — known to have no money in 
their pockets, and themselves not suspecting the 
value of this poverty ; putting nobody on his guard, 
but seeing the inside of the show, — hearing all the 
asides. There are no secrets from them, they 
know everything that befalls in the fire-company, 
the merits of every engine and of every man at the 
brakes, how to work it, and are swift to try their 
hand at every part ; so too the merits of every lo- 
comotive on the rails, and will coax the engineer to 
let them ride with him and pull the handles when 
it goes to the engine-house. They are there only 
for fun, and not knowing that they are at school, 



138 EDUCATION. 

in the court-house, or the cattle-show, quite as much 
and more than they were, an hour ago, in the arith- 
metic class. 

They know truth from counterfeit as quick as 
the chemist does. They detect weakness in your 
eye and behavior a week before you open your 
mouth, and have given you the benefit of their opin- 
ion quick as a wink. They make no mistakes, have 
no pedantry, but entire belief on experience. Their 
elections at base -ball or cricket are founded on 
merit, and are right. They don't pass for swim- 
mers until they can swim, nor for stroke-oar until 
they can row : and I desire to be saved from their 
contempt. If I can pass with them, I can manage 
well enough with their fathers. 

Everybody delights in the energy with which boys 
deal and talk with each other ; the mixture of fun 
and earnest, reproach and coaxing, love and wrath, 
with which the game is played ; — the good-natured 
yet defiant independence of a leading boy's behav- 
ior in the school-yard. How we envy in later life 
the happy youths to whom their boisterous games 
and rough exercise furnish the precise element 
which frames and sets off their school and college 
tasks, and teaches them, when least they think it, 
the use and meaning of these. In their fun and 
extreme freak they hit on the topmost sense of Hor- 
ace. The young giant, brown from his hunting- 



EDUCATION. 139 

tramp, tells his story well, interlarded with lucky 
allusions to Homer, to Virgil, to college-songs, to 
Walter Scott ; and Jove and Achilles, partridge 
and trout, opera and binomial theorem, Caesar in 
Gaul, Sherman in Savannah, and hazing in Hol- 
worthy, dance through the narrative in merry con- 
fusion, yet the logic is good. If he can turn his 
books to such picturesque account in his fishing and 
hunting, it is easy to see how his reading and expe- 
rience, as he has more of both, will interpenetrate 
each other. And every one desires that this pure 
vigor of action and wealth of narrative, cheered 
with so much humor and street rhetoric, should be 
carried into the habit of the young man, purged of 
its uproar and rudeness, but with all its vivacity en- 
tire. His hunting and campings-out have given 
him an indispensable base : I wish to add a taste 
for good company through his impatience of bad. 
That stormy genius of his needs a little direction to 
games, charades, verses of society, song, and a cor- 
respondence year by year with his wisest and best 
friends. Friendship is an order of nobility ; from 
its revelations we come more worthily into nature. 
Society he must have or he is poor indeed ; he 
gladly enters a school which forbids conceit, affec- 
tation, emphasis and dulness, and requires of each 
only the flower of his nature and experience ; re- 
quires good-will, beauty, wit, and select informa- 



140 EDUCATION. 

tion ; teaches by practice the law of conversation^ 
namely, to hear as well as to speak. 

Meantime, if circumstances do not permit the 
high social advantages, solitude has also its lessons. 
The obscure youth learns there the practice instead 
of the literature of his virtues ; and, because of the 
disturbing effect of passion and sense, which by 
a multitude of trifles impede the mind's eye from 
the quiet search of that fine horizon-line which truth 
keeps, — the way to knowledge and power has ever 
been an escape from too much engagement with 
affairs and possessions ; a way, not through plenty 
and superfluity, but by denial and renunciation, 
into solitude and privation ; and, the more is taken 
away, the more real and inevitable wealth of be- 
ing is made known to us. The solitary knows the 
essence of the thought, the scholar in society only 
its fair face. There is no want of example of great 
men, great benefactors, who have been monks and 
hermits in habit. The bias of mind is sometimes 
irresistible in that direction. The man is, as it were, 
born deaf and dumb, and dedicated to a narrow and 
lonely life. Let him study the art of solitude, yield 
as gracefully as he can to his destiny. Why can- 
not he get the good of his doom, and if it is from 
eternity a settled fact that he and society shall be 
nothing to each other, why need he blush so, and 
make wry faces to keep up a freshman's seat in the 



EDUCATION. 141 

fine world? Heaven often protects valuable souls 
charged with great secrets, great ideas, by long 
shutting them up with their own thoughts. And 
the most genial and amiable of men nmst alternate 
society with solitude, and learn its severe lessons. 

There comes the period of the imagination to 
each, a later youth ; the power of beauty, the power 
of books, of poetry. Culture makes his books real- 
ities to him, their characters more brilliant, more 
effective on his mind, than his actual mates. Do 
not spare to put novels into the hands of young peo- 
ple as an occasional holiday and experiment ; but, 
above all, good poetry in all kinds, epic, tragedy, 
lyric. If we can touch the imagination, we serve 
them, they will never forget it. Let him read 
"Tom Brown at Rugby," read "Tom Brown at 
Oxford," — better yet, read " Ilodson's Life " — 
Hodson who took prisoner the king of Delhi. They 
teach the same truth, — a trust, against all appear- 
ances, against all privations, in your own worth, and 
not in tricks, plotting, or patronage. 

I believe that our own experience instructs us 
that the secret of Education lies in respecting the 
pupil. It is not for you to choose what he shall 
know, what he shall do. It is chosen and foreor- 
dained, and he only holds the key to his own secret. 
By your tampering and thwarting and too much 



142 EDUCATION. 

governing he may be hindered from his end and 
kept out of his own. Respect the child. Wait 
and see the new product of Nature. Nature loves 
analogies, but not repetitions. Respect the child. 
Be not too much his parent. Trespass not on his 
solitude. 

But I hear the outcry which replies to this sug- 
gestion : — Would you verily throw up the reins of 
public and private discipline ; would you leave the 
young child to the mad career of his own passions 
and whimsies, and call this anarchy a respect for 
the child's nature ? I answer, — Respect the child, 
respect him to the end, but also respect yourself. 
Be the companion of his thought, the friend of his 
friendship, the lover of his virtue, — but no kins- 
man of his sin. Let him find you so true to your- 
self that you are the irreconcilable hater of his 
vice and the imperturbable slighter of his trifling. 

The two points in a boy's training are, to keep 
his naturel and train off all but that : — to keep 
his naturel., but stop off his uproar, fooling and 
horse-play ; — keep his nature and arm it with 
knowledge in the very direction in which it points. 
Here are the two capital facts. Genius and Drill, 
The first is the inspiration in the well-born healthy 
child, the new perception he has of nature. Some- 
what he sees in forms or hears in music or appre- 
hends in mathematics, or believes practicable in 



EDUCATION, 143 

mechanics or possible in political society, which no 
one else sees or hears or believes. This is the per- 
petual romance of new life, the invasion of God 
into the old dead world, when he sends into quiet 
houses a young soul with a thought which is not 
met, looking for something which is not there, but 
which ought to be there : the thought is dim but it 
is sure, and he casts about restless for means and 
masters to verify it ; he makes wild attempts to ex- 
plain himself and invoke the aid and consent of 
the bystanders. Baffled for want of language and 
methods to convey his meaning, not yet clear to 
himself, he conceives that though not in this house 
or town, yet in some other house or town is the wise 
master who can put him in possession of the rules 
and instruments to execute his will. Happy this 
child with a bias, with a thought which entrances 
him, leads him, now into deserts now into cities, 
the fool of an idea. Let him follow it in good 
and in evil report, in good or bad company ; it will 
justify itself ; it will lead him at last into the illustri- 
ous society of the lovers of truth. 

In London, in a private company, I became ac- 
quainted with a gentleman, Sir Charles Fellowes, 
who, being at Xanthus, in the ^gean Sea, had seen 
a Turk point with his staff to some carved work 
on the corner of a stone almost buried in the soil. 
Fellowes scraped away the dirt, was struck with 



144 EDUCATION. 

the beauty of the sculptured ornaments, and, look- 
ing about him, observed more blocks and fragments 
like this. He returned to the spot, procured labor- 
ers and uncovered many blocks. He went back to 
England, bought a Greek grammar and learned 
the language ; he read history and studied ancient 
art to explain his stones ; he interested Gibson the 
sculptor ; he invoked the assistance of the English 
Government ; he called in the succor of Sir Hum- 
phry Davy to analyze the pigments ; of experts in 
coins, of scholars and connoisseurs ; and at last in 
his third visit brought home to England such stat- 
ues and marble reliefs and such careful plans that 
he was able to reconstruct, in the British Museum 
where it now stands, the perfect model of the Ionic 
trophy-monument, fifty years older than the Parthe- 
non of Athens, and which had been destroyed by 
earthquakes, then by iconoclast Christians, then by 
savage Turks. But mark that in the task he had 
achieved an excellent education, and become asso- 
ciated with distinguished scholars whom he had 
interested in his pursuit; in short, had formed a 
college for himself ; the enthusiast had found the 
master, the masters, whom he sought. Always 
genius seeks genius, desires nothing so much as to 
be a pupil and to find those who can lend it aid to 
perfect itself. 

Nor are the two elements, enthusiasm and flrill, 



EDUCATION. 145 

incompatible. Accuracy is essential to beauty. The 
very definition of the intellect is Aristotle's : " that 
by which we know terms or boundaries." Give a 
boy accurate perceptions. Teach him the difference 
between the similar and the same. Make him call 
things by their right names. Pardon in him no 
blunder. Then he will give you solid satisfaction 
as long as he lives. It is better to teach the child 
arithmetic and Latin grammar than rhetoric or 
moral philosophy, because they require exactitude 
of performance ; it is made certain that the lesson 
is mastered, and that power of performance is worth 
more than the knowledge. He can learn anything 
which is important to him now that the power to 
learn is secured : as mechanics say, when one has 
learned the use of tools, it is easy to work at a new 
craft. 

Letter by letter, syllable by syllable, the child 
learns to read, and in good time can convey to all 
the domestic circle the sense of Shakspeare. By 
many steps each just as short, the stammering boy 
and the hesitating collegian, in the school debate, 
in college clubs, in mock court, comes at last to full, 
secure, triumphant unfolding of his thought in the 
popular assembly, with a fullness of power that 
makes all the steps forgotten. 

But this function of opening and feeding the hu- 
man mind is not to be fulfilled by any mechanical 

VOL.. :i. 10 



146 EDUCATION. 

or military method ; is not to be trusted to any skill 
less large than Nature itself. You must not neg- 
lect the form, but you must secure the essentials. 
It is curious how perverse and intermeddling we 
are, and what vast pains and cost we incur to do 
wrong. Whilst we all know in our own experi- 
ence and apply natural methods in our own busi- 
ness, — in education our common sense fails us, 
and we are continually trying costly machinery 
against nature, in patent schools and academies 
and in great colleges and universities. 

The natural method forever confutes our experi- 
ments, and we must still come back to it. The 
whole theory of the school is on the nurse's or 
mother's knee. The child is as hot to learn as 
the mother is to impart. There is mutual delight. 
The joy of our childhood in hearing beautiful sto- 
ries from some skilful aunt who loves to tell them, 
must be repeated in youth. The boy wishes to 
learn to skate, to coast, to catch a fish in the brook, 
to hit a mark with a snowball or a stone ; and a boy 
a little older is just as well pleased to teach him 
these sciences. Not less delightful is the mutual 
pleasure of teaching and learning the secret of al- 
gebra, or of chemistry, or of good reading and good 
recitation of poetry or of prose, or of chosen facts 
in history or in biography. 

Nature provided for the communicate* o:-^ of 



EDUCATION. 147 

thought, by planting with it in the receiving mind 
a fury to impart it. 'T is so in every art, in every 
science. One burns to tell the new fact, the other 
burns to hear it. See how far a young doctor will 
ride or walk to witness a new surgical operation. I 
have seen a carriage-maker's shop emptied of all its 
workmen into the street, to scrutinize a new pattern 
from New York. So in literature, the young man 
who has taste for poetry, for fine images, for noble 
thoughts, is insatiable for this nourishment, and for- 
gets all the world for the more learned friend, — 
who finds equal joy in dealing out his treasures. 

Happy the natural college thus self -instituted 
around every natural teacher ; the young men of 
Athens around Socrates; of Alexandria around 
Plotinus ; of Paris around Abelard ; of Germany 
around Fichte, or Niebuhr, or Goethe : in short the 
natural sphere of every leading mind. But the 
moment this is organized, difficulties begin. The 
college was to be the nurse and home of genius ; 
but, though every young man is born with some de- 
termination in his nature, and is a potential genius; 
is at last to be one ; it is, in the most, obstructed 
and delayed, and, whatever they may hereafter be, 
their senses are now opened in advance of their 
minds. They are more sensual than intellectual. 
Appetite and indolence they have, but no enthusi- 
asm. These come in numbers to the college : few 



148 EDUCATION. 

geniuses : and the teaching comes to be arranged 
for these many, and not for those few. Hence the 
instruction seems to require skiKul tutors, of accu- 
rate and systematic mind, rather than ardent and 
inventive masters. Besides, the youth of genius 
are eccentric, won't drill, are irritable, uncertain, 
explosive, solitary, not men of the world, not good 
for every-day association. You have to work for 
large classes instead of individuals; you must lower 
your flag and reef your sails to wait for the dull 
sailors ; you grow departmental, routinary, military 
almost with your discipline and college police. But 
what doth such a school to form a great and heroic 
character? What abiding Hope can it inspire? 
What Reformer will it nurse ? What poet will it 
breed to sing to the human race ? What discov- 
erer of Nature's laws will it prompt to enrich us by 
disclosing in the mind the statute which all matter 
must obey? What fiery soul will it send out to 
warm a nation with his charity ? What tranquil 
mind will it have fortified to walk with meekness 
in private and obscure duties, to wait and to suffer? 
Is it not manifest that our academic institutions 
should have a wider scope ; that they should not be 
timid and keep the ruts of the last generation, but 
that wise men thinking for themselves and heartily 
seeking the good of mankind, and counting the cost 
of innovation, should dare to arouse the young to a 



EDUCATION. 149 

just and heroic life ; that the moral nature should be 
addressed in the school-room, and children should 
be treated as the high-born candidates of truth and 
virtue ? 

So to regard the young child, the young man, 
requires, no doubt, rare patience : a patience that 
nothing but faith in the remedial forces of the soul 
can give. You see his sensualism; you see his 
want of those tastes and perceptions which make 
the power and safety of your character. Very 
likely. But he has something else. If he has his 
own vice, he has its correlative virtue. Every 
mind should be allowed to make its own statement 
in action, and its balance will appear. In these 
judgments one needs that foresight which was at- 
tributed to an eminent reformer, of whom it was 
said " his patience could see in the bud of the aloe 
the blossom at the end of a hundred years." Alas 
for the cripple Practice when it seeks to come up 
with the bird Theory, which flies before it. Try 
your design on the best school. The scholars are 
of aU ages and temperaments and capacities. It 
is difficult to class them, some are too young, some 
are slow, some perverse. Each requires so much 
consideration, that the morning hope of the teacher, 
of a day of love and progress, is often closed at 
evening by despair. Each single case, the more 
it is considered, shows more to be done ; and the 



150 EDUCATION. 

strict conditions of the hours, on one side, and 
the number of tasks, on the other. Whatever be- 
comes of our method, the conditions stand fast, — 
six hours, and thirty, fifty, or a hundred and fifty 
pupils. Something must be done, and done speed- 
ily, and in this distress the wisest are tempted to 
adopt violent means, to proclaim martial law, cor- 
poral punishment, mechanical arrangement, bribes, 
spies, wrath, main strength and ignorance, in lieu 
of that wise genial providential influence they had 
hoped, and yet hope at some future day to adopt. 
Of course the devotion to details reacts injuriously 
on the teacher. He cannot indulge his genius, he 
cannot delight in personal relations with young 
friends, when his eye is always on the clock, and 
twenty classes are to be dealt with before the day 
is done. Besides, how can he please himself with 
genius, and foster modest virtue ? A sure propor- 
tion of rogue and dunce finds its way into every 
school and requires a cruel share of time, and the 
gentle teacher, who wished to be a Providence to 
youth, is grown a martinet, sore with suspicions ; 
knows as much vice as the judge of a police court, 
and his love of learning is lost in the routine of 
grammars and books of elements. 

A rule is so easy that it does not need a man to 
apply it ; an automaton, a machine, can be made 
to keep a school so. It facilitates labor and 



EDUCATION. 151 

thought so much that there is always the tempta- 
tion in large schools to omit the endless task of 
meeting the wants of each single mind, and to gov- 
ern by steam. But it is at frightful cost. Our 
modes of Education aim to expedite, to save labor ; 
to do for masses what cannot be done for masses, 
what must be done reverently, one by one : say 
rather, the whole world is needed for the tuition of 
each pupil. The advantages of this system of em- 
ulation and display are so prompt and obvious, it 
is such a time-saver, it is so energetic on slow and 
on bad natures, and is of so easy application, need- 
ing no sage or poet, but any tutor or schoolmaster 
in his first term can apply it, — that it is not 
strange that this calomel of culture should be a 
popular medicine. On the other hand, total absti- 
nence from this drug, and the adoption of simple 
discipline and the following of nature, involves at 
once immense claims on the time, the thoughts, on 
the life of the teacher. It requires time, use, in- 
sight, event, all the great lessons and assistances of 
God ; and only to think of using it implies charac- 
ter and profoundness ; to enter on this course of 
discipline is to be good and great. It is precisely 
analogous to the difference between the use of cor- 
poral punishment and the methods of love. It is 
so easy to bestow on a bad boy a blow, overpower 
laim, and get obedience without words, that in this 



152 EDUCATION. 

world of hurry and distraction, who can wait for 
the returns of reason and the conquest of self ; in 
the uncertainty too whether that will ever come? 
And yet the familiar observation of the universal 
compensations might suggest the fear that so sum- 
mary a stop of a bad humor was more jeopardous 
than its continuance. 

Now the correction of this quack practice is to 
import into Education the wisdom of life. Leave 
this military hurry and adopt the pace of Nature. 
Her secret is patience. Do you know how the nat- 
uralist learns all the secrets of the forest, of plants, 
of birds, of beasts, of reptiles, of fishes, of the 
rivers and the sea ? When he goes into the woods 
the birds fly before him and he finds none ; when 
he goes to the river bank, the fish and the reptile 
swim away and leave him alone. His secret is pa- 
tience ; he sits down, and sits still ; he is a statue ; 
he is a log. These creatures have no value for 
their time, and he must put as low a rate on his. 
By dint of obstinate sitting still, reptile, fish, bird 
and beast, which all wish to return to their haunts, 
begin to return. He sits still ; if they approach, 
he remains passive as the stone he sits upon. They 
lose their fear. They have curiosity too about him. 
By and by the curiosity masters the fear, and they 
come swimming, creeping and flying towards him ; 
and as he is still immovable, they not only resume 



EDUCATION. 153 

their haunts and their ordinary labors and man- 
ners, show themselves to him in their work-day 
trim, but also volunteer some degree of advances 
towards fellowship and good understanding with 
a biped who behaves so civilly and well. Can you 
not baffle the impatience and passion of the child 
by your tranquillity? Can you not wait for him, 
as Nature and Providence do ? Can you not keep 
for his mind and ways, for his secret, the same cu- 
riosity you give to the squirrel, snake, rabbit, and 
the sheldrake and the deer ? He has a secret ; 
wonderful methods in him ; he is, — every child, — . 
a new style of man ; give him time and oppor- 
tunity. Talk of Columbus and Newton ! I tell 
you the child just born in yonder hovel is the be- 
ginning of a revolution as great as theirs. But 
you must have the believing and prophetic eye. 
Have the self-command you wish to inspire. Your 
teaching and discipline must have the reserve and 
taciturnity of Nature. Teach them to hold their 
tongues by holding your own. Say little ; do not 
snarl ; do not chide ; but govern by the eye. See 
what they need, and that the right thing is done. 

I confess myself utterly at a loss in suggesting 
particular reforms in our ways of teaching. No dis- 
cretion that can be lodged with a school-committee, 
with the overseers or visitors of an academy, of a 
college, can at all avail to reach these difficidties 



154 EDUCATION. 

and perplexities, but they solve themselves when 
we leave institutions and address individuals. The 
will, the male power, organizes, imposes its own 
thought and wish on others, and makes that mili- 
tary eye which controls boys as it controls men ; 
admirable in its results, a fortune to him who has 
it, and only dangerous when it leads the workman 
to overvalue and overuse it and precludes him from 
finer means. Sympathy, the female force, — which 
they must use who have not the first, — deficient 
in instant control and the breaking down of re- 
sistance, is more subtle and lasting and creative. 
I advise teachers to cherish mother- wit. I assume 
that you will keep the grammar, reading, writing 
and arithmetic in order ; 't is easy and of cour3e 
you will. But smuggle in a little contraband wit, 
fancy, imagination, thought. If you have a taste 
which you have suppressed because it is not shared 
by those about you, tell them that. Set this law up, 
whatever becomes of the rules of the school : they 
must not whisper, much less talk ; but if one of the 
young people says a wise thing, greet it, and let all 
the children clap their hands. They shall have no 
book but school-books in the room ; but if one has 
brought in a Plutarch or Shakspeare or Don Quix- 
ote or Goldsmith or any other good book, and un- 
derstands what he reads, put him at once at the 
head of the class. Nobody shall be disorderly, or ^■U' h ISz 



EDUCATION. 143 

mechanics or possible in political society, which no 
one else sees or hears or believes. This is the per- 
petual romance of new life, the invasion of God 
into the old dead world, when he sends into quiet 
houses a young soul with a thought which is not 
met, looking for something which is not there, but 
which ought to be there : the thought is dim but it 
is sure, and he casts about restless for means and 
masters to verify it ; he makes wild attempts to ex- 
plain himself and invoke the aid and consent of 
the bystanders. Baffled for want of language and 
methods to convey his meaning, not yet clear to 
himself, he conceives that though not in this house 
or town, yet in some other house or town is the wise 
master who can put him in possession of the rules 
and instruments to execute his will. Happy this 
child with a bias, with a thought which entrances 
him, leads him, now into deserts now into cities, 
the fool of an idea. Let him follow it in good 
and in evil report, in good or bad company ; it will 
justify itself ; it will lead him at last into the illustri- 
ous society of the lovers of truth. 

In London, in a private company, I became ac- 
quainted with a gentleman. Sir Charles Fellowes, 
who, being at Xanthus, in the ^gean Sea, had seen 
a Turk point with his staff to some carved work 
on the corner of a stone almost buried in the soil. 
Fellowes scraped away the dirt, was struck with 



156 EDUCATION. 

verse. Consent yourself to be an organ of your 
highest thought, and lo ! suddenly you put all men 
in your debt, and are the fountain of an energy that 
goes pulsing on with waves of benefit to the borders 
of society, to the circumference of things. 



THE SUPERLATIVE. 



When wrath and terror changed Jove's regal port 
And the rash-leaping thunderbolt fell short. 



For Art, for Music overthrilled, 

The wine-cup shakes, the wine is spilled. 



THE SUPERLATIVE. 



The doctrine of temperance is one of many 
degrees. It is usually taught on a low platform, 
but one of great necessity, — that of meats and 
drinks, and its importance cannot be denied and 
hardly exaggerated. But it is a long way from the 
Maine Law to the heights of absolute self-command 
which respect the conservatism of the entire ener- 
gies of the body, the mind, and the soul. I wish 
to point at some of its higher functions as it enters 
into mind and character. 

There is a superlative temperament which has 
no medium range, but swiftly oscillates from the 
freezing to the boiling point, and which affects the 
manners of those who share it with a certain des- 
peration. Their aspect is grimace. They go tear- 
ing, convulsed through life, — wailing, praying, ex- 
claiming, swearing. We talk, sometimes, with peo- 
ple whose conversation would lead you to suppose 
that they had lived in a museum, where all the 
objects were monsters and extremes. Their good 
1 Reprinted from the Century of February, 1882. 



160 THE SUPERLATIVE. 

people are phoenixes; their naughty are like the 
prophet's figs. They use the superlative of gram- 
mar : " most perfect," " most exquisite," " most 
horrible." Like the French, they are enchanted, 
they are desolate, because you have got or have not 
got a shoe-string or a wafer you happen to want, — 
not perceiving that superlatives are diminutives, 
and weaken ; that the positive is the sinew of 
speech, the superlative the fat. If the talker lose 
a tooth, he thinks the universal thaw and dissolu- 
tion of things has come. Controvert his opinion 
and he cries " Persecution ! " and reckons himself 
with Saint Barnabas, who was sawn in two. 

Especially we note this tendency to extremes 
in the pleasant excitement of horror-mongers. Is 
there something so delicious in disasters and pain ? 
Bad news is always exaggerated, and we may chal- 
lenge Providence to send a fact so tragical that we 
cannot contrive to make it a little worse in our 
gossip. 

AU this comes of poverty. We are unskilful 
definers. From want of skiU to convey quality, 
we hope to move admiration by quantity. Lan- 
guage should aim to describe the fact. It is not 
enough to suggest it and magnify it. Sharper 
sight would indicate the true line. ' T is very wea- 
risome, this straining talk, these experiences all 
exquisite, intense and tremendous, — " The best I 



THE SUPERLATIVE. IGl 

ever saw ; " "I never in my life ! " One wishes 
these terms gazetted and forbidden. Every favor- 
ite is not a cherub, nor every cat a griffin, nor each 
unpleasing person a dark, diabolical intriguer ; nor 
agonies, excruciations nor ecstasies our daily bread. 

Horace Walpole relates that in the expecta- 
tion, current in London a century ago, of a great 
earthquake, some people provided themselves with 
dresses for the occasion. But one would not wear 
earthquake dresses or resurrection robes for a work- 
ing jacket, nor make a codicil to his will whenever 
he goes out to ride; and the secrets of death, 
judgment and eternity are tedious when recurring 
as minute-guns. Thousands of people live and die 
who were never, on a single occasion, hungry or 
thirsty, or furious or terrified. The books say, " It 
made my hair stand on end ! " Who, in our muni- 
cipal life, ever had such an experience ? Indeed, 
I believe that much of the rhetoric of terror, — 
" It froze my blood," " It made my knees knock," 
etc. — most men have realized only in dreams and 
nightmares. 

Then there is an inverted superlative, or superla^ 
tive contrary, which shivers, like Demophoon, in 
the sun : wants fan and parasol on the cold Friday ; 
is tired by sleep ; feeds on drugs and poisons ; finds 
the rainbow a discoloration ; hates birds and flow« 
ers. 

vOL. A.. --i 



162 THE SUPERLATIVE. 

The exaggeration of which I complain makes 
plain fact the more welcome and refreshing. It is 
curious that a face magnified in a concave mirror 
loses its expression. All this overstatement is 
needless. A little fact is worth a whole limbo of 
dreams, and I can well spare the exaggerations 
which appear to me screens to conceal ignorance. 
Among these glorifiers, the coldest stickler for 
names and dates and measures cannot lament his 
criticism and coldness of fancy. Think how much 
pains astronomers and opticians have taken to pro- 
cure an achromatic lens. Discovery in the heavens 
has waited for it ; discovery on the face of the earth 
not less. I hear without sympathy the complaint 
of young and ardent persons that they find life no 
region of romance, with no enchanter, no giant, no 
fairies, nor even muses, I am very much indebted 
to my eyes, and am content that they should see 
the real world, always geometrically finished with- 
out blur or halo. The more I am engaged with it 
the more it suffices. 

How impatient we are, in these northern lati- 
tudes, of looseness and intemperance in speech ! 
Our measure of success is the moderation and low 
level of an individual's judgment. Doctor Chan- 
ning's piety and wisdom had such weight that, in 
Boston, the popular idea of religion was whatever 
this eminent divine held. But ^ remember that 



THE SUPERLATIVE. 1C3 

his best friend, a man of guarded lips, speaking of 
him in a circle of his admirers, said ; " I have 
known him long, I have studied his character, and 
I believe him capable of virtue." An eminent 
French journalist paid a high compliment to the 
Duke of Wellingiion, when his documents were 
published : " Here are twelve volumes of military 
dispatches, and the word glory is not fomid in 
them." 

The English mind is arithmetical, values exact- 
ness, likes literal statement ; stigmatizes any heat 
or hyperbole as Irish, French, Italian, and infers 
weakness and inconsequence of character in speak- 
ers who use it. It does not love the superlative 
but the positive degree. Our customary and me- 
chanical existence is not favorable to flights ; long 
nights and frost hold us pretty fast to realities. 
The people of English stock, in all countries, are a 
solid people, wearing good hats and shoes, and own- 
ers of land whose title-deeds are properly recorded. 
Their houses are of wood, and brick, and stone, not 
designed to reel in earthquakes, nor blow about 
through the air much in hurricanes, nor to be lost 
under sand-drifts, nor to be made bonfires of by 
whimsical viziers ; but to stand as commodious, 
rentable tenements for a century or two. All our 
manner of life is on a secure and moderate pattern, 
such as can last. Violence and extravagance are, 



164 THE SUPERLATIVE. 

once for all, distasteful ; competence, quiet, com- 
fort, are the agreed weKare. 

Ever a low style is best. "I judge by every 
man's truth of his degree of understanding," said 
Chesterfield. And I do not know any advantage 
more conspicuous which a man owes to his experi- 
ence in markets and the Exchange, or politics, than 
the caution and accuracy he acquires in his report 
of facts. " Uncle Joel's news is always true," said 
a person to me with obvious satisfaction, and said 
it justly ; for the old head, after deceiving and be- 
ing deceived many times, thinks, " What 's the use 
of having to unsay to-day what I said yesterday ? 
I will not be responsible ; I will not add an epi- 
thet. I will be as moderate as the fact, and will 
use the same expression, without color, which I re- 
ceived ; and rather repeat it several times, word 
for word, than vary it ever so little." 

The first valuable power in a reasonable mind, 
one would say, was the power of plain statement, 
or the power to receive things as they befall, and 
to transfer the picture of them to another mind un- 
altered. 'T is a good rule of rhetoric which Schle- 
gel gives, — " In good prose, every word is under- 
scored ; " which, I suppose, means, Never italicize. 

Spartans, stoics, heroes, saints and gods use a 
short and positive speech. They are never off their 
centres. As soon as they swell and paint and find 



THE SUPERLATIVE. \(j^ 

tmtli not enough for them, softening of the brain 
has already begun. It seems as if inflation were a 
disease incident to too much use of words, and the 
remedy lay in recourse to things. I am daily 
struck with the forcible understatement of people 
who have no literary habit. The low expression is 
strong and agreeable. The citizen dwells in delu- 
sions. His dress and draperies, house and stables, 
occupy him. The poor countryman, having no cir- 
cumstance of carpets, coaches, dinners, wine and 
dancing in his head to confuse him, is able to look 
straight at you, without refraction or prismatic glo- 
ries, and he sees whether you see straight also, or 
whether your head is addled by this mixture of 
wines. 

The common people diminish : " a cold snap ; " 
" it rains easy ; " " good haying weather." When 
a farmer means to tell you that he is doing well 
with his farm, he says, " I don't work as hard as I 
did, and I don't mean to." When he wishes to 
condemn any treatment of soils or of stock, he says, 
" It won't do any good." Under the Catskill 
Momitains the boy in the steamboat said, " Come 
up here, Tony ; it looks pretty out-of-doors." The 
farmers in the region do not call particular sum- 
mits, as KiUington, Camel's Hump, Saddle-back, 
etc., mountains, but only " them 'ere rises," and 
reserve the word mountains for the rang;e. 



166 THE SUPERLATIVE. 

I once attended a dinner given to a great state 
functionary by functionaries, — men of law, state, 
and trade. The guest was a great man in his own 
country and an honored diplomatist in this. His 
health was drunk with some acknowledgment of his 
distinguished services to both countries, and fol- 
lowed by nine cold hurrahs. There was the vicious 
superlative. Then the great official spoke and beat 
his breast, and declared that he should remember 
tills honor to the latest moment of his existence. 
He was answered again by officials. Pity, thought 
I, they should lie so about their keen sensibility 
to the nine cold hurrahs and to the commonplace 
compliment of a dinner. Men of the world value 
truth, in proportion to their ability ; not by its sa- 
credness, but for its convenience. Of such, espe- 
cially of diplomatists, one has a right to expect wit 
and ingenuity to avoid the lie if they must comply 
with the form. Now, I had been present, a little 
before, in the country at a cattle-show dinner, 
which followed an agricultural discourse delivered 
by a farmer : the discourse, to say the truth, was 
bad ; and one of our village fathers gave at the 
dinner this toast : " The orator of the day : his 
subject deserves the attention of every farmer." 
The caution of the toast did honor to our village 
father. I wish great lords and diplomatists had as 
much respect for truth. 



THE SUPERLATIVE. 1G7 

But whilst thus everything recommends simplic- 
ity and temperance of action; the utmost direct- 
ness, the positive degree, we mean thereby that 
" rightly to be great is not to stir without great ar- 
gument." Whenever the true objects of action ap- 
pear, they are to be heartily sought. Enthusiasm 
is the height of man; it is the passing from the 
human to the divine. 

The superlative is as good as the positive, if it be 
alive. If man loves the conditioned, he also loves 
the unconditioned. We don't wish to sin on the 
other side, and to be purists, nor to check the in- 
vention of wit or the sally of humor. 'T is very 
different, this weak and wearisome lie, from the 
stimulus to the fancy which is given by a romanc- 
ing talker who does not mean to be exactly taken, 
— like the gallant skipper who complained to his 
owners that he had pumped the Atlantic Ocean 
three times through his ship on the passage, and 
't was common to strike seals and porpoises in the 
hold. Or what was similarly asserted of the late 
Lord Jeffrey, at the Scottish bar, — an attentive 
auditor declaring on one occasion after an argu- 
ment of three hours, that he had spoken the whole 
English language three times over in his speech. 

The objection to unmeasured speech is its lie. 
All men like an impressive fact. The astronomer 
shows you in his telescope the nebula of Orion, that 



168 THE SUPERLATIVE. 

you may look on that which is esteemed the far- 
thest-off land in visible nature. At the Bank of 
England they put a scrap of paper that is worth a 
million pounds sterling into the hands of the vis- 
itor to touch. Our travelling is a sort of search for 
the superlatives or summits of art, — much more 
the real wonders of jiower in the human form. 
The arithmetic of Newton, the memory of Maglia- 
becchi or Mirandola, the versatility of Julius Caesar, 
the concentration of Bonaparte, the inspiration of 
Shakspeare, are sure of commanding interest and 
awe in every company of men. 

The superlative is the excess of expression. We 
are a garrulous, demonstrative kind of creatures, 
and cannot live without much outlet for all our 
sense and nonsense. And fit expression is so rare 
that mankind have a superstitious value for it, and 
it would seem the whole human race agree to value 
a man precisely in proportion to his power of ex- 
pression ; and to the most expressive man that has 
existed, namely, Shakspeare, they have awarded the 
highest place. 

The expressors are the gods of the world, but 
the men whom these expressors revere are the solid, 
balanced, undemonstrative citizens who make the 
reserved guard, the central sense, of the world. 
For the luminous object wastes itself by its shining, 
' — is luminous because it is burning up ; and if the 



THE SUPERLATIVE. 1G9 

powers are disposed for display, there is all the less 
left for use and creation. The talent sucks the 
substance of the man. Superlatives must be bought 
by too many positives. Gardens of roses must be 
stripped to make a few drops of otto. And these 
raptures of fire and frost, which indeed cleanse 
pedantry out of conversation and make the speech 
salt and biting, would cost me the days of well- 
being which are now so cheap to me, yet so valued. 
I like no deep stakes. I am a coward at gambling. 
I will bask in the common sun a while longer. 

Children and thoughtless people like exagger- 
ated event and activity ; like to run to a house on 
fire, to a fight, to an execution ; like to talk of a 
marriage, of a bankruptcy, of a debt, of a crime. 
The wise man shuns all this. I knew a grave man 
who, being urged to go to a church where a clergy- 
man was newly ordained, said " he liked him very 
well, but he would go when the interesting Sundays 
were over." 

All rests at last on the simplicity of nature, or 
real being. Nothing is for the most part less es- 
teemed. We are fond of dress, of ornament, of 
accomplishments, of talents, but distrustful of 
health, of soundness, of pure innocence. Yet na- 
ture measures her greatness by what she can spare, 
by what remains when all superfluity and accesso- 
ries are shorn off. 



170 THE SUPERLATIVE. 

Nor is there in nature itself any swell, any brag, 
any strain or shock, but a firm common sense 
through all her elephants and lions, through all 
her ducks and geese ; a true proportion between 
her means and her performance. Semper sibi sim- 
ilis. You shall not catch her in any anomalies, 
nor swaggering into any monsters. In all the years 
that I have sat in town and forest, I never saw a 
winged dragon, a flying man, or a talking fish, but 
ever the strictest regard to rule, and an absence of 
all surprises. No ; nature encourages no looseness, 
pardons no errors ; freezes punctually at 32°, boils 
punctually at 212° ; crystallizes in water at one in- 
variable angle, in diamond at one, in granite at 
one ; and if you omit the smallest condition the ex- 
periment will not succeed. Her communication 
obeys the gospel rule, yea or nay. She never ex- 
patiates, never goes into the reasons. Plant beech- 
mast and it comes up, or it does not come up. Sow 
grain, and it does not come up : put lime into the 
soil and try again, and this time she says yea. To 
every question an abstemious but absolute reply. 
The like staidness is in her dealings with us. Na- 
ture is always serious, — does not jest with us. 
Where we have begun in folly, we are brought 
quickly to plain dealing. Life could not be car- 
ried on except by fidelity and good earnest ; and 
she brings the most heartless trifler to determined 



THE SUPERLATIVE. 171 

purpose presently. The men whom she admits to 
her confidence, the simple and great characters, are 
uniformly marked by absence of pretension and by 
understatement. The old and the modern sages of 
clearest insight are plain men, who have held them- 
selves hard to the poverty of nature. 

The firmest and noblest ground on which people 
can live is truth ; the real with the real ; a ground 
on which nothing is assumed, but where they speak 
and think and do what they must, because they are 
so and not otherwise. 

But whilst the basis of character must be sim- 
plicity, the expression of character, it must be re- 
membered, is, in great degree, a matter of clunate. 
In the temperate climates there is a temperate 
speech, in torrid climates an ardent one. Whilst 
in Western nations the superlative in conversation 
is tedious and weak, and in character is a capital 
defect, nature delights in showing us that in the 
East it is animated, it is pertinent, pleasing, poetic. 
Whilst she appoints us to keep within the sharp 
boundaries of form as the condition of our strength, 
she creates in the East the uncontrollable yearning 
to escape from limitation into the vast and bound- 
less ; to use a freedom of fancy which plays with 
all the works of nature, great or minute, galaxy or 
grain of dust, as toys and words of the mind ; in- 
culcates the tenet of a beatitude to be found in es- 



172 THE SUPERLATIVE. 

cape from all organization and all personality, and 
makes ecstasy an institution. 

Religion and poetry are all the civilization of the 
Arab. "The groimd of Paradise," said Moham- 
med, " is extensive, and the plants of it are hallelu- 
jahs." Religion and poetry ; the religion teaches 
an inexorable destiny; it distinguishes only two 
days in each man's history, the day of his lot, and 
the day of judgment. The religion runs into ascet- 
icism and fate. The costume, the articles in which 
wealth is displayed, are in the same extremes. 
Thus the diamond and the pearl, which are only 
accidental and secondary in their use and value to 
us, are proper to the oriental world. The diver 
dives a beggar and rises with the price of a king- 
dom in his hand. A bag of sequins, a jewel, a bal- 
sam, a single horse, constitute an estate in coun- 
tries where insecure institutions make every one 
desirous of concealable and convertible property. 
Shall I say, further, that the orientals excel in 
costly arts, in the cutting of precious stones, in 
working in gold, in weaving on hand-looms costly 
stuffs from silk and wool, in spices, in dyes and 
drugs, henna, otto and camphor, and in the train- 
ing of slaves, elephants and camels, — things which 
are the poetry and superlative of commerce. 

On the other hand, — and it is a good illustra- 
tion of the difference of genius, — the Europeai? 



THE SUPERLATIVE. 173 

nations, and, in general, all nations in proportion 
to their civilization, understand the manufacture of 
iron. One of the meters of the height to which 
any civility rose is the skill in the fabric of iron. 
Universally, the better gold, the worse man. The 
political economist defies us to show any gold-mine 
country that is traversed by good roads : or a shore 
where pearls are found on which good schools are 
erected. The European civility, or that of the 
positive degree, is established by coal-mines, by 
ventilation, by irrigation and every skill — in hav- 
ing water cheap and pure, by iron, by agriculture 
for bread-stuffs, and manufacture of coarse and 
family cloths. Our modern improvements have 
been in the invention of friction matches ; of India- 
rubber shoes ; of the famous two parallel bars of 
iron ; then of the air-chamber of Watt, and of the 
judicious tubing of the engine, by Stephenson, in 
order to the construction of locomotives. 

Meantime, Nature, who loves crosses and mix- 
tures, makes these two tendencies necessary each to 
the other, and delights to re-enforce each peculiar- 
ity by imparting the other. The Northern genius 
finds itself singularly refreshed and stimulated by 
the breadth and luxuriance of Eastern imagery and 
modes of thinking, which go to check the pedantry 
of our inventions and the excess of our detail. 
There is no writing which has more electric power 



174 THE SUPERLATIVE. 

to unbind and animate the torpid intellect than the 
bold Eastern muse. 

If it come back howe\ er to the question of final 
superiority, it is too plain that there is no question 
that the star of empire rolls West : that the warm 
sons of the Southeast have bent the neck under the 
yoke of the cold temperament and the exact under- 
standing of the Northwestern races. 



THE SOVEREIGNTY OF ETHICS. 



These rules were writ in human heart 
By Him who built the day ; 

The columns of the universe 
Not firmer based than they. 



Thou shalt not try 
To plant thy shrivelled pedantry 
On the shoulders of the sky. 



THE SOVEREIGNTY OF ETHICSJ 



Since the discovery of Oersted that galvanism 
and electricity and magnetism are only forms of 
one and the same force, and convertible each into 
the other, we have continually suggested to us a 
larger generalization : that each of the great depart- 
ments of Nature — chemistry, vegetation, the animal 
life — exhibits the same laws on a different plane ; 
that the intellectual and moral worlds are analogous 
to the material. There is a kind of latent omnis- 
cience not only in every man but in every particle. 
That convertibility we so admire in plants and an- 
imal structures, whereby the repairs and the ulte- 
rior uses are subserved, when one part is wounded 
or deficient, by another ; this self-help and self -cre- 
ation proceed from the same original power which 
works remotely in grandest and meanest structures 
by the same design, — works in a lobster or a mite- 
worm as a wise man would if imprisoned in that 
poor form. 'T is the effort of God, of the Supreme 
Intellect, in the extremest frontier of his universe. 

1 Reprinted from the North American Review, of May, 1878. 

VOL. X. 12 



178 THE SOVEREIGNTY OF ETHICS. 

As this unity exists in the organization of insect, 
beast and bird, still ascending to man, and from 
lower type of man to the highest yet attained, so it 
does not less declare itself in the spirit or intelli- 
gence of the brute. In ignorant ages it was com- 
mon to vaunt the human superiority by underrating 
the instinct of other animals ; but a better discern- 
ment finds that the difference is only of less and 
more. Experiment shows that the bird and the 
dog reason as the hunter does, that all the animals 
show the same good sense in their humble walk that 
the man who is their enemy or friend does ; and, if 
it be in smaller measure, yet it is not diminished, 
as his often is, by freak and folly. St. Pierre says 
of the animals that a moral sentiment seems to 
have determined their physical organization. 

I see the unity of thought and of morals running 
through all animated Nature ; there is no difference 
of quality, but only of more and less. The animal 
who is wholly kept down in Nature has no anxieties. 
By yielding, as he must do, to it, he is enlarged and 
reaches his highest point. The poor grub, in the 
hole of a tree, by yielding itself to Nature, goes 
blameless through its low part and is rewarded at 
last, casts its filthy hull, expands into a beautiful 
form with rainbow wings, and makes a part of the 
summer day. The Greeks called it Psyche, a man- 
ifest emblem of the soul. The man down in Nature 



THE SOVEREIGNTY OF ETHICS. 179 

occupies himself in guarding, in feeding, in warming 
and multiplying his body, and, as long as he knows 
no more, we justify him ; but presently a mystic 
change is wrought, a new perception opens, and he 
is made a citizen of the world of souls : he feels 
what is called duty; he is aware that he owes a 
higher allegiance to do and live as a good member 
of this universe. In the measure in which he has 
this sense he is a man, rises to the universal life. 
The high intellect is absolutely at one with moral 
nature. A thought is imbosomed in a sentiment, 
and the attempt to detach and blazon the thought 
is like a show of cut flowers. The moral is the 
measure of health, and in the voice of Genius I hear 
invariably the moral tone, even when it is disowned 
in words ; — health, melody and a wider horizon be- 
long to moral sensibility. The finer the sense of 
justice, the better poet. The believer says to the 
skeptic : — 

" One avenue was shaded from thine eyes 
Through which I wandered to eternal truth." 

Humility is the avenue. To be sure, we exaggerate 
when we represent these two elements as disunited ; 
every man shares them both ; but it is true that men 
generally are marked by a decided predominance 
of one or of the other element. 

In youth and in age we are moralists, and in ma- 



180 THE SOVEREIGNTY OF ETHICS. 

ture life the moral element steadily rises in the re- 
gard of all reasonable men. 

'T is a sort of proverbial dying speech of scholars 
(at least it is attributed to many) that which An- 
thony Wood reports of Nathaniel Carpenter, an 
Oxford Fellow. " It did repent him," he said, 
" that he had formerly so much courted the maid 
instead of the mistress," (meaning philosophy and 
mathematics to the neglect of divinity). This, in 
the language of our time, would be ethics. 

And when I say that the world is made up of 
moral forces, these are not separate. All forces are 
found in Nature united with that which they move : 
heat is not separate, light is not massed aloof, nor 
electricity, nor gravity, but they are always in com- 
bination. And so moral powers ; they are thirsts 
for action, and the more you accumulate, the more 
they mould and form. 

It is in the stomach of plants that development 
begins, and ends in the circles of the universe. 'T is 
a long scale from the gorilla to the gentleman — 
from the gorilla to Plato, Newton, Shakspeare — to 
the sanctities of religion, the refinements of legisla- 
tion, the summits of science, art and poetry. The 
beginnings are slow and infirm, but it is an always- 
accelerated march. The geologic world is chroni- 
cled by the growing ripeness of the strata from lower 
to higher, as it becomes the abode of more highly- 



THE SOVEREIGNTY OF ETHICS. 1^1 

organized i^lants and animals. The civil history of 
men might be traced by the successive meliorations 
as marked in higher moral generalizations ; — virtue 
meaning physical courage, then chastity and tem- 
perance, then justice and love ; —bargains of kings 
with peoples of certain rights to certain classes, 
then of rights to masses, — then at last came the 
day when, as the historians rightly tell, the nerves 
of the world were electrified by the proclamation 
that all men are born free and equal. 

Every truth leads in another. The bud extrudes 
the old leaf, and every truth brings that which will 
supplant it. In the court of law the judge sits over 
the culprit, but in the court of life in the same hour 
the judge also stands as culprit before a true tribu- 
nal. Every judge is a culprit, every law an abuse. 
Montaigne kills off bigots as cowhage kills worms ; 
but there is a higher muse there sitting where he 
durst not soar, of eye so keen that it can report of 
a realm in which all the wit and learning of the 
Frenchman is no more than the cunning of a fox. 

It is the same fact existing as sentiment and as 
wUl in the mind, which works in Nature as irresist- 
ible law, exerting influence over nations, inteUigent 
beings, or down in the kingdoms of brute or of 
chemical atoms. Nature is a tropical swamp in sun- 
shine, on whose purlieus we hear the song of sum- 
mer birds, and see prismatic dew-drops — but her 



182 THE SOVEREIGNTY OF ETHICS. 

interiors are terrific, full of hydras and crocodiles. 
In the pre-adaraite she bred valor only ; by-and-by 
she gets on to man, and adds tenderness, and thus 
raises virtue piecemeal. 

When we trace from the beginning, that ferocity 
has uses ; only so are the conditions of the then 
world met, and these monsters are the scavengers, 
executioners, diggers, pioneers and fertilizers, de- 
stroying what is more destructive than they, and 
making better life possible. We see the steady 
aim of Benefit in view from the first. Melioration 
is the law. The crudest foe is a masked benefactor. 
The wars which make history so dreary, have 
served the cause of truth and virtue. There is al- 
ways an instinctive sense of right, an obscure idea 
which animates either party and which in long 
periods vindicates itself at last. Thus a sublime 
confidence is fed at the bottom of the heart that, in 
spite of appearances, in spite of malignity and blind 
self-interest living for the moment, an eternal, be- 
neficent necessity is always bringing things right ; 
and, though we should fold our arms, — which we 
cannot do, for our duty requires us to be the very 
hands of this guiding sentiment, and work in the 
present moment, — the evils we suffer will at last 
end themselves through the incessant opposition of 
Nature to everything hurtful. 

The excellence of men consists in the complete* 



THE SOVEREIGNTY OF ETHICS. 183 

ness with which the lower system is taken up into 
the higher — a process of much time and delicacy, 
but in which no point of the lower should be left 
untranslated ; so that the warfare of beasts should 
be renewed in a finer field, for more excellent vic- 
tories. Savage war gives place to that of Turenne 
and Wellington, which has limitations and a code. 
This war again gives place to the finer quarrel of 
property, where the victory is wealth and the 
defeat poverty. 

The inevitabilities are always sapping every 
seeming prosperity built on a wrong. No matter 
how you seem to fatten on a crime, that can never 
be good for the bee which is bad for the hive. See 
how these things look in the page of history. Na- 
tions come and go, cities rise and fall, all the in- 
stincts of man, good and bad, work, • — and every 
wish, appetite, and passion, rushes into act and em- 
bodies itself in usages, protects itself with laws. 
Some of them are useful and universally acceptable, 
hinder none, help all, and these are honored and 
perpetuated. Others are noxious. Commimity of 
property is tried, as when a Tartar horde or an In- 
dian tribe roam over a vast tract for pasturage or 
hunting ; but it is found at last that some establish- 
ment of property, allowing each on some distinct 
terms to fence and cultivate a piece of land, is best 
for all. 



184 



THE SOVEREIGNTY OF ETHICS. 



" For my part," said Napoleon, " it is not the 
mystery of the incarnation which 1 discover in relig- 
ion, but the mystery of social order, which associ- 
ates with heaven that idea of equality which pre- 
vents the rich from destroying the poor." 

Shall I say then it were truer to see Necessity 
calm, beautiful, passionless, without a smile, covered 
with ensigns of woe, stretching her dark warp 
across the universe ? These threads are Nature's 
pernicious elements, her deluges, miasma, disease, 
poison ; her curdling cold, her hideous reptiles and 
worse men, cannibals, and the depravities of civil- 
ization ; the secrets of the prisons of tyranny, the 
slave and his master, the proud man's scorn, the 
orphan's tears, the vices of men, lust, cruelty and 
pitiless avarice. These make the gloomy warp of 
ages. Humanity sits at the dread loom and throws 
the shuttle and fills it with joyful rainbows, until 
the sable ground is flowered all over with a woof 
of human industry and wisdom, virtuous examples, 
symbols of useful and generous arts, with beauty 
and pure love, courage and the victories of the just 
and wise over malice and wrong. 

Nature is not so helpless but it can rid itself at 
last of every crime. An Eastern poet, in describ- 
ing the golden age, said that God had made justice 
so dear to the heart of Nature that, if any injustice 
lurked anywhere under the sky, the blue vault 



THE SOVEREIGNTY OF ETHICS. 185 

would shrivel to a snake-skin and cast it out by 
spasms. But the spasms of Nature are years and 
centuries, and it will tax the faith of man to wait 

so long. 

Man is always throwing his praise or blame on 
events, and does not see that he only is real, and 
the world his mirror and echo. He imputes the 
stroke to fortune, which in reality himself strikes. 
The student discovers one day that he lives in en- 
chantment : the house, the works, the persons, the 
days, the weathers — all that he caUs Nature, all 
that he calls institutions, when once his mind is 
active are visions merely, wonderful allegories, 
significant pictures of the laws of the mind ; and 
through this enchanted gallery he is led by unseen 
guides to read and learn the laws of Heaven. This 
discovery may come early, — sometimes in the 
nursery, to a rare child ; later in the school, but 
oftener when the mind is more mature ; and to 
multitudes of men wanting in mental activity it 
never comes — any more than poetry or art. But 
it ought to come ; it belongs to the human inteUect, 
and is an insight which we cannot spare. 

The idea of right exists in the human mind, and 
lays itself out in the equilibrium of Nature, in the 
equalities and periods of our system, in the level of 
seas, in the action and reaction of forces. Nothing 
Is allowed to exceed or absorb the rest; if it do, 



186 THE SOVEREIGNTY OF ETHICS. 

it is disease, and is quickly destroyed. It was an 
early discovery of the mind, — this beneficent rule. 
Strength enters just as much as the moral element 
prevails. The strength of the animal to eat and to 
be luxurious and to usurp is rudeness and imbecil- 
ity. The law is: To each shaU be rendered his 
own. As thou sowest, thou shalt reap. Smite, 
and thou shalt smart. Serve, and thou shalt be 
served. If you love and serve men, you cannot, 
by any hiding or stratagem, escape the remunera- 
tion. Secret retributions are always restoring the 
level, when disturbed, of the Divine justice. It is 
impossible to tilt the beam. All the tyrants and 
proprietors and monopolists of the world in vain 
set their shoulders to heave the bar. Settles for 
evermore the ponderous equator to its line, and 
man and mote and star and sun must range with 
it, or be pulverized by the recoil. 

It is a doctrine of unspeakable comfort. He that 
plants his foot here, passes at once out of the king- 
dom of illusions. Others may well suffer in the 
hideous picture of crime with which earth is filled 
and the life of society threatened, but the habit of 
respecting that great order which certainly contains 
and will dispose of our little system, will take all 
fear from the heart. It did itself create and dis- 
tribute all that is created and distributed, and, 
trusting to its power, we cease to care for what it 



THE SOVEREIGNTY OF ETHICS. 18T 

will certainly order well. To good men, as we call 
good men, this doctrine of Trust is an unsounded 
secret. They use the word, they have accepted the 
notion of a mechanical supervision of human life, 
by which that certain wonderful being whom they 
call God does take up their affairs where their intel- 
ligence leaves them, and somehow knits and co-ordi- 
nates the issues of them in all that is beyond the 
reach of private faculty. They do not see that Ile^ 
that It^ is there, next and within ; the thought of the 
thought ; the affair of affairs ; that he is existence, 
and take him from them and they would not be. 
They do not see that particulars are sacred to him, 
as well as the scope and outline ; that these passages 
of daily life are his work ; that in the moment when 
they desist from interference, these particulars take 
sweetness and grandeur, and become the language 
of mighty principles. 

A man should be a guest in his own house, and 
a guest in his own thought. He is there to speak 
for truth ; but who is he ? Some clod the truth 
has snatched from the ground, and with fire has 
fashioned to a momentary man. Without the truth, 
he is a clod again. Let him find his superiority in 
not wishing superiority ; find the riches of love 
which possesses that which it adores ; the riches of 
poverty ; the height of lowliness, the immensity of 
to-day ; and, in the passing hour, the age of ages. 



188 THE SOVEREIGNTY OF ETHICS. 

Wondrous state of man ! never so happy as when 
lie has lost all private interests and regards, and 
exists only in obedience and love of the Author. 

The fiery soul said : " Let me be a blot on this 
fair world, the obscurest, the loneliest sufferer, with 
one proviso, — that I know it is His agency. I will 
love him, though he shed frost and darkness on 
every way of mine." The emphasis of that blessed 
doctrine lay in lowliness. The new saint gloried 
in infirmities. Who or what was he ? His rise 
and his recovery were vicarious. He has fallen in 
another ; he rises in another. 

We perish, and perish gladly, if the law remains. 
I hope it is conceivable that a man may go to ruin 
gladly, if he see that thereby no shade falls on that 
he loves and adores. We need not always be stip- 
ulating for our clean shirt and roast joint per diem. 
We do not believe the less in astronomy and vege- 
tation, because we are writhing and roaring in our 
beds with rheumatism. Cripples and invalids, we 
doubt not there are bounding fawns in the forest, 
and lilies with graceful, springing stem ; so neither 
do we doubt or fail to love the eternal law, of which 
we are such shabby practisers. Truth gathers itself 
spotless and unhurt after all our surrenders and 
concealments and partisanship — never hurt by the 
treachery or ruin of its best defenders, whether 
Luther, or William Penn, or St. Paul. We an- 



THE SOVEREIGNTY OF ETHICS. 189 

swer, when tliey tell us of the bad behavior of Lu- 
ther or Paul : " Well, what if he did ? Who was 
more pained than Luther or Paul ? " Shall we at- 
tach ourselves violently to our teachers and histor- 
ical personalities, and think the foundation shaken 
if any fault is shown in their record ? But how is 
the truth hurt by their falling from it ? The law 
of gravity is not hurt by every accident, though 
our leg be broken. No more is the law of justice 
by our departure from it. 

We are to know that we are never without a pi- 
lot. When we know not how to steer, and dare 
not hoist a sail, we can drift. The current knows 
the way, though we do not. When the stars and 
sun appear, when we have conversed with naviga- 
tors who know the coast, we may begin to put out 
an oar and trim a sail. The ship of heaven guides 
itself, and will not accept a wooden rudder. 

Have you said to yourself ever : ' I abdicate all 
choice, I see it is not for me to interfere. I see 
that I have been one of the crowd; that I have 
been a pitiful person, because I have wished to be 
my own master, and to dress and order my whole 
way and system of living. I thought I managed 
it very well. I see that my neighbors think so. T 
have heard prayers, I have prayed even, but I have 
never until now dreamed that this undertaking the 
entire management of my own affairs was not com- 



190 THE SOVEREIGNTY OF ETHICS. 

mendable. I have never seen, until now, that it 
dwarfed me. I have not discovered, until this 
blessed ray flashed just now through my soul, that 
there dwelt any power in Nature that would relieve 
me of my load. But now I see.' 

What is this intoxicating sentiment that allies 
this scrap of dust to the whole of Nature and the 
whole of Fate, — that makes this doll a dweller in 
ages, mocker at time, able to spurn all outward ad- 
vantages, peer and master of the elements ? I am 
taught by it that what touches any thread in the 
vast web of being touches me. I am representative 
of the whole ; and the good of the whole, or what I 
call the right, makes me invulnerable. 

How came this creation so magically woven that 
nothing can do me mischief but myself, — that an 
invisible fence surrounds my being which screens 
me from all harm that I will to resist ? If I will 
stand upright, the creation cannot bend me. But 
if I violate myself, if I commit a crime, the light- 
ning loiters by the speed of retribution, and every 
act is not hereafter but instantaneously rewarded 
according to its quality. Virtue is the adopting of 
this dictate of the universal mind by the individual 
will. Character is the habit of this obedience, and 
Religion is the accompanying emotion, the emotion 
of reverence which the presence of the universal 
mind ever excites in the individual. 



THE SOVEREIGNTY OF ETHICS. 191 

We go to famous books for our examples of 
character, just as we send to England for shrubs 
which grow as well in our own door-yards and cow- 
pastures. Life is always rich, and spontaneous 
graces and forces elevate it in every domestic cir- 
cle, whicJi are overlooked while we are reading 
something less excellent in old authors. From the 
obscurity and casualty of those which I know, I in- 
fer the obscurity and casualty of the like balm and 
consolation and immortality in a thousand homes 
which I do not know, all round the world. And I 
see not why to these simple instincts, simple yet 
grand, all the heights and transcendencies of virtue 
and of enthusiasm are not open. There is power 
enough in them to move the world ; and it is not 
any sterility or defect in ethics, but our negligence 
of these fine monitors, of these world-embracing 
sentiments, that makes religion cold and life low. 

While the immense energy of the sentiment of 
duty and the awe of the supernatural exert incom- 
parable influence on the mind, — yet it is often per- 
verted, and the tradition received with awe, but 
without correspondent action of the receiver. Then 
you find so many men infatuated on that topic! 
Wise on all other, they lose their head the moment 
fchey talk of religion. It is the sturdiest prejudice 
in the public mind that religion is something by 
itself ; a department distinct from all other experi. 



192 THE SOVEREIGNTY OF ETHICS. 

ences, and to which the tests and judgment men 
are ready enough to show on other things, do not 
apply. You may sometimes talk with the gravest 
and best citizen, and the moment the topic of re- 
ligion is broached, he runs into a childish supersti- 
tion. His face looks infatuated, and his conversa- 
tion is. When I talked with an ardent missionary, 
and pointed out to him that his creed found no 
support in my experience, he replied, " It is not so 
in your experience, but is so in the other world." 
I answer : Other world ! there is no other world. 
God is one and omnipresent ; here or nowhere is 
the whole fact. The one miracle which God works 
evermore is in Nature, and imparting himself to 
the mind. When we ask simply, " What is true 
in thought ? what is just in action ? " it is the yield- 
ing of the private heart to the Divine mind, and 
all personal preferences, and all requiring of won- 
ders, are profane. 

The word miracle, as it is used, only indicates the 
ignorance of the devotee, staring with wonder to 
see water turned into wine, and heedless of the stu- 
pendous fact of his own personality. Here he 
stands, a lonely thought harmoniously organized 
into correspondence with the universe of mind and 
matter. What narrative of wonders coming down 
from a thousand years ought to charm his attention 
like this ? Certainly it is human to value a general 



THE SOVEREIGNTY OF ETHICS. 193 

consent, a fraternity of believers, a crowded church ; 
but as the sentiment purifies and rises, it leaves 
crowds. It makes churches of two, churches of 
one. A fatal disservice does this Swedenborg or 
other who offers to do my thinking for me. It 
seems as if, when the Spirit of God speaks so 
plainly to each soul, it were an impiety to be listen- 
ing to one or another saint. Jesus was better than 
others, because he refused to listen to others and 
listened at home. 

You are really interested in your thought. You 
have meditated in silent wonder on your existence 
in this world. You have perceived in the first fact 
of your conscious life here a miracle so astound- 
ing, — a miracle comprehending all the universe of 
miracles to which your intelligent life gives you ac- 
cess, — as to exhaust wonder, and leave you no 
need of hunting here or there for any particular 
exhibitions of power. Then up comes a man with 
a text of 1 John v. 7, or a knotty sentence from St. 
Paul, which he considers as the axe at the root of 
your tree. You cannot bring yourself to care for 
it. You say: " Cut away ; my tree is Ygdrasil — 
the tree of life." He interrupts for the moment 
your peaceful trust in the Divine Providence. Let 
him know by your security that your conviction is 
clear and sufficient, and if he were Paul himself, 
you also are here, and with your Creator. 



194 THE SOVEREIGNTY OF ETHICS. 

We all give way to superstitions. The house in 
which we were born is not quite mere timber and 
stone ; is still haunted by parents and progenitors. 
The creeds into which we were initiated in child- 
hood and youth no longer hold their old place in 
the minds of thoughtful men, but they are not noth= 
ing to us, and we hate to have them treated with 
contempt. There is so much that we do not know, 
that we give to these suggestions the benefit of the 
doubt. 

It is a necessity of the human mind that he who 
looks at one object should look away from all other 
objects. He may throw himself upon some sharp 
statement of one fact, some verbal creed, with such 
concentration as to hide the universe from him : but 
the stars roll above ; the sun warms him. With 
patience and fidelity to truth he may work his way 
through, if only by coming against somebody who 
believes more fables than he does ; and, in trying 
to dispel the illusions of his neighbor, he opens his 
own eyes. 

In the Christianity of this country there is wide 
difference of opinion in regard to inspiration, proph- 
ecy, miracles, the future state of the soul ; every 
variety of opinion, and rapid revolution in opinions, 
in the last half -century. It is simply impossible to 
read the old history of the first century as it was 
read in the ninth ; to do so you must abolish in 



THE SOVEREIGNTY OF ETHICS. 195 

your mind the lessons of all the centuries from the 
ninth to the nineteenth. 

Shall I make the mistake of baptizing the day- 
light, and time, and space, by the name of John or 
Joshua, in whose tent I chance to behold daylight, 
and space, and time? What anthropomorphists 
we are in this, that we cannot let moral distinctions 
be, but must mould them into human shape ! 
" Mere morality " means, — not put into a personal 
master of morals. Our religion is geographical, 
belongs to our time and place ; respects and my- 
thologizes some one time and place and person and 
people. So it is occasional. It visits us only on 
some exceptional and ceremonial occasion, on a 
wedding or a baptism, on a sick-bed, or at a fu- 
neral, or perhaps on a sublime national victory or a 
peace. But that be sure is not the religion of the 
universal unsleeping providence, which lurks in 
trifles, in still, small voices, in the secrets of the 
heart and our closest thoughts, as efficiently as in 
our proclamations and successes. 

Far be it from me to underrate the men or the 
churches that have fixed the hearts of men and or- 
ganized their devout impulses or oracles into good 
institutions. The Church of Rome had its saints, 
and inspired the conscience of Europe — St. Au- 
gustine, and Thomas a Kempis, and Fenelon ; the 
piety of the English Church in Cranmer, and Her- 



196 THE SOVEREIGNTY OF ETHICS. 

bert, and Taylor ; the Reformed Church, Scougal ; 
the mystics, Behmen and Swedenborg; the Qua- 
kers, Fox and James Naylor. I confess our later 
generation appears ungirt, frivolous, compared with 
the religions of the last or Calvinistic age. There 
was in the last century a serious habitual reference 
to the spiritual world, running through diaries, let- 
ters and conversation — yes, and into wills and le- 
gal instruments also, compared with which our lib- 
eration looks a little foppish and dapper. 

The religion of seventy years ago was an iron 
belt to the mind, giving it concentration and force. 
A rude people were kept respectable by the deter- 
mination of thought on the eternal world. Now 
men fall abroad, — want polarity, — suffer in char- 
acter and intellect. A sleep creeps over the great 
functions of man. Enthusiasm goes out. In its 
stead a low prudence seeks to hold society staunch, 
but its arms are too short, cordage and machinery 
never supply the place of life. 

Luther would cut his hand off sooner than write 
theses against the pope if he suspected that he was 
bringing on with all his might the pale negations 
of Boston Unitarianism. I will not now go into 
the metaphysics of that reaction by which in history 
a period of belief is followed by an age of criticism, 
in which wit takes the place of faith in the leading 
spirits, and an excessive respect for forms out of 



THE SOVEREIGNTY OF ETHICS. 197 

which the heart has departed becomes most obvious 
in the least religious minds. I will not now explore 
the causes of the result, but the fact must be con- 
ceded as of frequent recurrence, and never more 
evident than in our American church. To a self- 
denying, ardent church, delighting in rites and or- 
dinances, has succeeded a cold, intellectual race, 
who analyze the prayer and psalm of their forefa- 
thers, and the more intellectual reject every yoke 
of authority and custom with a petulance unprece- 
dented. It is a sort of mark of probity and sincer- 
ity to declare how little you believe, while the mass 
of the community indolently follow the old forms 
with childish scrupulosity, and we have punctuality 
for faith, and good taste for character. 

But I hope the defect of faith with us is only 
apparent. We shall find that freedom has its own 
guards, and, as soon as in the vulgar it runs to li- 
cense, sets all reasonable men on exploring those 
guards. I do not think the summit of this age 
truly reached or expressed unless it attain the 
height which religion and philosophy reached in 
any former age. If I miss the inspiration of the 
saints of Calvinism, or of Platonism, or Buddhism, 
our times are not up to theirs, or, more truly, have 
not yet their own legitimate force. 

Worship is the regard for what is above us. 
Men are respectable only as they respect. We de- 



198 THE SOVEREIGNTY OF ETHICS. 

light in children because of that religious eye which 
belongs to them ; because of their reverence for 
their seniors, and for their objects of belief. The 
poor Irish laborer one sees with respect, because he 
believes in something, in his church, and in his em- 
ployers. Superstitious persons we see with respect, 
because their whole existence is not bounded by 
their hats and their shoes, but they walk attended 
by pictures of the imagination, to which they pay 
homage. You cannot impoverish man by taking 
away these objects above him without ruin. It is 
very sad to see men who think their goodness made 
of themselves ; it is very grateful to see those who 
hold an opinion the reverse of this. 

AJl ages of belief have been great ; all of unbe- 
lief have been mean. The Orientals believe in 
Fate. That which shall befall them is written on 
the iron leaf ; they will not turn on their heel to 
avoid famine, plague, or the sword of the enemy. 
That is great, and gives a great air to the people. 
We in America are charged with a great deficiency 
in worship ; that reverence does not belong to our 
character ; that our institutions, our politics, and 
our trade, have fostered a self-reliance which is 
small, liliputian, full of fuss and bustle ; we look 
at and wiU bear nothing above us in the state, and 
do exceedingly applaud and admire ourselves, and 
believe in our senses and understandings, whUe our 



THE SOVEREIGNTY OF ETHICS. 



199 



imagination and our moral sentiment are desolated. 
In religion too we want objects above ; we are fast 
losing or have already lost our old reverence ; new 
views of inspiration, of miracles, of the saints, have 
supplanted the old opinions, and it is vain to bring 
them again. Revolutions never go backward, and 
in all churches a certain decay of ancient piety is 
lamented, and all threatens to lapse into apathy 
and indifferentism. It becomes us to consider 
whether we cannot have a real faith and real ob- 
jects in lieu of these false ones. The human mind, 
when it is trusted, is never false to itself. If there 
be sincerity and good meaning — if there be really 
in us the wish to seek for our superiors, for that 
which is lawfully above us, we shaU not long look 
in vain. 

Meantime there is great centrality, a centripe- 
tence equal to the centrifugence. The mystic or the- 
ist is never scared by any startling materialism. He 
knows the laws of gravitation and of repulsion are 
deaf to French talkers, be they never so witty. If 
theology shows that opinions are fast changing, it is 
not so with the convictions of men with regard to 
conduct. These remain. The most daring heroism, 
the most accomplished culture, or rapt holiness, 
never exhausted the claim of these lowly duties, — 
never penetrated to their origin, or was able to look 
behind their source. We cannot disenchant, we 



200 THE SOVEREIGNTY OF ETHICS. 

cannot impoverish ourselves, by obedience ; but by 
humility we rise, by obedience we command, by pov- 
erty we are rich, by dying we live. 

We are thrown back on rectitude forever and 
ever, only rectitude, — to mend one ; that is all we 
can do. But that the zealot stigmatizes as a sterile 
chimney-corner philosophy. Now the first position 
I make is that natural religion supplies still all the 
facts which are disguised under the dogma of pop- 
ular creeds. The progress of religion is steadily to 
its identity with morals. 

How is the new generation to be edified ? How 
should it not ? The life of those once omnipotent 
traditions was really not in the legend, but in the 
moral sentiment and the metaphysical fact which 
the legends enclosed — and these survive. A new 
Socrates, or Zeno, or Swedenborg, or Pascal, or a 
new crop of geniuses like those of the Elizabethan 
age, may be born in this age, and, with happy 
heart and a bias for theism, bring asceticism, duty, 
and magnanimity into vogue again. 

It is true that Stoicism, always attractive to the 
intellectual and cultivated, has now no temples, no 
academy, no commanding Zeno or Antoninus. It 
accuses us that it has none : that pure ethics is not 
now formulated and concreted into a cultus, a fra- 
ternity with assemblings and holy-days, with song 
and book, with brick and stone. Why have not those 



THE SOVEREIGNTY OF ETHICS. 201 

who believe in it and love it left all for tliis, and ded- 
icated themselves to write out its scientific scriptures 
to become its Vidgate for millions ? I answer for 
one that the inspirations we catch of this law are 
not continuous and technical, but joyful sparkles, 
and are recorded for their beauty, for the delight 
they give, not for their obligation ; and that is their 
priceless good to men, that they charm and uplift, 
not that they are imposed. It has not yet its first 
hymn. But, that every line and word may be coals 
of true fire, ages must roll, ere these casual wide- 
falling cinders can be gathered into broad and 
steady altar-flame. 

It does not yet appear what forms the religious 
feeling will take. It prepares to rise out of all 
forms to an absolute justice and healthy perception. 
Here is now a new feeling of humanity infused into 
public action. Here is contribution of money on a 
more extended and systematic scale than ever before 
to repair public disasters at a distance, and of polit- 
ical support to oppressed parties. Then there are 
the new conventions of social science, before which 
the questions of the rights of women, the laws of 
trade, the treatment of crime, regulation of labor, 
come for a hearing. If these are tokens of the 
steady currents of thought and will in these direc- 
tions, one might well anticipate a new nation. 

I know how delicate this principle is, — how dif- 



202 THE SOVEREIGNTY OE ETHICS. 

ficult of adaptation to practical and social arrange- 
ments. It cannot be profaned ; it cannot be forced ; 
to draw it out of its natural current is to lose at 
once all its power Such experiments as we recall 
are those in which some sect or dogma made the tie, 
and that was an artificial element, which chilled and 
checked the union. But is it quite impossible to 
believe that men should be drawn to each other by 
the simple respect which each man feels for another 
in whom he discovers absolute honesty ; the respect 
he feels for one who thinks life is quite too coarse 
and frivolous, and that he should like to lift it a 
little, should like to be the friend of some man's 
virtue ? for another who, underneath his compliances 
with artificial society, would dearly like to serve 
somebody, — to test his own reality by making him- 
self useful and indispensable? 

Man does not live by bread alone, but by faith, 
by admiration, by sympathy. 'T is very shallow to 
say that cotton, or iron, or silver and gold are kings 
of the world ; there are rulers that will at any mo- 
ment make these forgotten. Fear will. Love will. 
Character will. Men live by their credence. Gov- 
ernments stand by it, — by the faith that the people 
share, — whether it comes from the religion in 
which they were bred, or from an original conscience 
in themselves, which the popular religion echoes. 
If government could only stand by force, if the in* 



THE SOVEREIGNTY OF ETHICS. 203 

stinct of the people was to resist the government, it 
is plain the government must be two to one in order 
to be secure, and then it would not be safe from des- 
perate individuals. But no ; the old commandment, 
" Thou shalt not kill," holds down New York, and 
London, and Paris, and not a police or horse-guards. 

The credence of men it is that moulds them, and 
creates at will one or another surface. The mind 
as it opens transfers very fast its choice from the 
circumstance to the cause ; from courtesy to love, 
from inventions to science, from London or Wash- 
ington law, or public opinion, to the self- revealing 
idea ; from all that talent executes to the sentiment 
that fills the heart and dictates the future of nations. 
The commanding fact which I never do not see, is 
she sufficiency of the moral sentiment. We but- 
tress it up, in shallow hours or ages, with legends, 
traditions and forms, each good for the one moment 
in which it was a happy type or symbol of the Power; 
but the Power sends in the next moment a new les- 
son, which we lose while our eyes are reverted and 
striving to perpetuate the old. 

America shall introduce a pure religion. Ethics 
are thought not to satisfy affection. But all the re- 
ligion we have is the ethics of one or another holy 
person ; as soon as character appears, be sure love 
will, and veneration, and anecdotes and fables 
about him, and delight of good men and women in 



204 THE SOVEREIGNTY OF ETHICS. 

him. And what deeps of grandeur and beauty are 
known to us in ethical truth, what divination or in- 
sight belongs to it ! For innocence is a wonderful 
electuary for purging the eyes to search the nature 
of those souls that pass before it. What armor it 
is to protect the good from outward or inward harm, 
and with what power it converts evil accidents into 
benefits ; the power of its countenance ; the power 
of its presence ! To it alone comes true friendship ; 
to it come grandeur of situation and poetic percep- 
tion, enriching all it deals with. 

Once men thought Spirit divine, and Matter dia- 
bolic ; one Ormuzd, the other Ahriman. Now sci- 
ence and philosophy recognize the parallelism, the 
approximation, the unity of the two : how each re- 
flects the other as face answers to face in a glass : 
nay, how the laws of both are one, or how one is 
the realization. We are learning not to fear truth. 

The man of this age must be matriculated in the 
university of sciences and tendencies flowing from 
all past periods. He must not be one who can be 
surprised and shipwrecked by every bold or subtile 
word which malignant and acute men may utter in 
his hearing, but should be taught all skepticisms and 
unbeliefs, and made the destroyer of all card-houses 
and paper walls, and the sifter of all opinions, by 
being put face to face from his infancy with Reality. 

A man who has accustomed himself to look at all 



THE SOVEREIGNTY OF ETHICS. 205 

his circumstances as very mutable, to carry his pos- 
sessions, his relations to persons, and even his opin- 
ions, in his hand, and in all these to pierce to the 
principle and moral law, and everywhere to find 
that, — has put himself out of the reach of all skep- 
ticism ; and it seems as if whatever is most affect- 
ing and sublime in our intercourse, in our happiness, 
and in our losses, tended steadily to uplift us to 
a life so extraordinary, and, one might say, super- 
human. 



THE PREACHER. 



Ascending thorough just degrees 
To a consummate holiness, 
As angel blind to trespass done, 
And bleaching all souls like the sun. 



THE PEEACHER.1 



In the history of opinion, the pinch of falsehood 
shows itself first, not in argument and formal pro- 
test, but in insincerity, indifference and abandon- 
ment of the Church or the scientific or political or 
economic institution for other better or worse forms. 

The venerable and beautiful traditions in which 
we were educated are losing their hold on human 
belief, day by day ; a restlessness and dissatisfac- 
tion in the religious world marks that we are in a 
moment of transition ; as when the Roman Church 
broke into Protestant and Catholic, or, earlier, 
when Paganism broke into Christians and Pagans. 
The old forms rattle, and the new delay to appear; 
material and industrial activity have materialized 
the age, and the mind, haughty with its sciences, 
disdains the religious forms as childish. 

1 Originally written as a parlor lecture to some Divinity 
students, in 1867; afterwards enlarged from earlier writings, 
and read in its present form at tlie Divinity Chapel, Cam- 
bridge, May 5th, 1879. Reprinted from the Unitarian Review 
for January, 1880. 
voii. X, 14 



210 THE PREACHER 

In consequence of this revolution in opinion, it 
appears, for the time, as the misfortune of this pe- 
riod that the cultivated mind has not the happiness 
and dignity of the religious sentiment. We are 
born too late for the old and too early for the new 
faith. I see in those classes and those persons in 
whom I am accustomed to look for tendency and 
progress, for what is most positive and most rich 
in human nature, and who contain the activity of 
to-day and the assurance of to-morrow, — I see in 
them character, but skepticism ; a clear enough 
perception of the inadequacy of the popular relig- 
ious statement to the wants of their heart and in- 
tellect, and explicit declarations of this fact. They 
have insight and truthfulness ; they will not mask 
their convictions ; they hate cant ; but more than 
this I do not readily find. The gracious motions 
of the soul, — piety, adoration, — I do not find. 
Scorn of hypocrisy, pride of personal character, 
elegance of taste and of manners and pursuit, a 
boundless ambition of the intellect, willingness to 
sacrifice personal interests for the integrity of the 
character, — all these they have ; but that religious 
submission and abandonment which give man a 
new element and being, and make him sublime, 
— it is not in churches, it is not in houses. I see 
movement, I hear aspirations, but I see not how 
the great God prepares to satisfy the heart in the 



THE PREACHER, 211 

new order of things. No Church, no State emerges ; 
and when we have extricated ourselves from all the 
embarrassments of the social problem, the oracle 
does not yet emit any light on the mode of individ- 
ual life. A thousand negatives it utters, clear and 
strong, on all sides ; but the sacred affirmative it 
hides in the deepest abyss. 

We do not see that heroic resolutions will save 
men from those tides which a most fatal moon 
heaps and levels in the moral, emotive and intel- 
lectual nature. It is certain that many dark hours, 
many imbecilities, periods of inactivity, — solstices 
when we make no progress, but stand still, — will 
occur. In those hours, we can find comfort in rev- 
erence of the highest power, and only in that. We 
never do quite nothing, or never need. It looks as 
if there were much doubt, much waiting, to be en- 
dured by the best. Perhaps there must be austere 
elections and determinations before any clear vis- 
ion. 

No age and no person is destitute of the senti- 
ment, but in actual history its illustrious exhibi- 
tions are interrupted and periodical, — the ages of 
belief, of heroic action, of intellectual activity, of 
men cast in a higher mould. 

But the sentiment that pervades a nation, the 
nation must react upon. It is resisted and cor- 
rupted by that obstinate tendency to personify and 



212 THE PREACHER. 

bring under the eyesight what should be the con- 
templation of Reason alone. The Understanding 
will write out the vision in a Confession of Faith. 
Art will embody this vanishing Spirit in temples, 
pictures, sculptures and hymns. The senses in- 
stantly transfer the reverence from the vanishing 
Spirit to this steadfast form. Ignorance and pas- 
sion alloy and degrade. In proportion to a man's 
want of goodness, it seems to him another and not 
himself ; that is to say, the Deity becomes more ob- 
jective, until finally flat idolatry prevails. 

Of course the virtuous sentiment appears ar- 
rayed against the nominal religion, and the true 
men are hunted as unbelievers, and burned. Then 
the good sense of the people wakes up so far as to 
take tacit part with them, to cast off reverence for 
the Church ; and there follows an age of unbelief. 

This analysis was inevitable and useful. But 
the sober eye finds something ghastly in this em- 
piricism. At first, delighted with the triumph of 
the intellect, the surprise of the results and the 
sense of power, we are like hunters on the scent 
and soldiers who rush to battle: but when the 
game is run down, when the enemy lies cold in his 
blood at our feet, we are alarmed at our solitude , 
we would gladly recall the life that so offended us ; 
the face seems no longer that of an enemy. 

I say the effect is withering ; for, this examina- 



THE PREACHER. 213 

tion resulting in the constant detection of errors, 
the flattered understanding assumes to judge all 
things, and to anticipate the same victories. In 
the activity of the understanding, the sentiments 
sleep. The understanding presumes in things 
above its sphere, and, because it has exposed errors 
in a church, concludes that a church is an error ; ^ 
because it has found absurdities to which the sen- 
timent of veneration is attached, sneers at venera- 
tion ; so that analysis has run to seed in unbelief. 
There is no faith left. We laugh and hiss, pleased 
with our power in making heaven and earth a 
howling wilderness. 

Unlovely, nay, frightfvd, is the solitude of the 
soul which is without God in the world. To wan- 
der all day in the sunlight among the tribes of ani- 
mals, unrelated to anything better ; to behold the 
horse, cow and bird, and to foresee an equal and 
speedy end to him and them ; — no, the bird, as it 
hurried by with its bold and perfect flight, would 
disclaim his sympathy and declare him an outcast. 
To see men pursuing in faith their varied action, 
warm-hearted, providing for their children, loving 
their friends, performing their promises, — what 
are they to this chill, houseless, fatherless, aimless 
Cain, the man who hears only the sound of his own 
footsteps in God's resplendent creation ? To him, 
it is no creation ; to him, these fair creatures are 



214 THE PREACHER, 

hapless spectres : he knows not what to make of it. 
To him, heaven and earth have lost their beauty. 
How gloomy is the clay, and upon yonder shining 
pond what melancholy light ! I cannot keep the 
sun in heaven, if you take away the purpose that 
animates him. The ball, indeed, is there, but his 
power to cheer, to illuminate the heart as well as 
the atmosphere, is gone forever. It is a lamp-wick 
for meanest uses. The words, greats venerable^ 
have lost their meaning; every thought loses all 
its depth and has become mere surface. 

But religion has an object. It does not grow thin 
or robust with the health of the votary. The object 
of adoration remains forever unhurt and identical. 
We are in transition, from the worship of the fa- 
thers which enshrined the law in a private and per- 
sonal history, to a worship which recognizes the 
true eternity of the law, its presence to you and 
me, its equal energ^^ in what is called brute nature 
as in what is called sacred. The next age will 
behold God in the ethical laws — as mankind be- 
gins to see them in this age, self -equal, self-execu- 
ting, instantaneous and self-affirmed; needing no 
voucher, no prophet and no miracle besides their 
own irresistibility, — and will regard natural his- 
tory, private fortunes and politics, not for them- 
selves, as we have done, but as illustrations of those 
laws, of that beatitude and love. Nature is too 



THE PREACHER. 215 

thin a screen ; the glory of the One breaks in 
everywhere. 

Every movement of religious opinion is of pro- 
found importance to politics and social life ; and 
this of to-day has the best omens as being of the 
most expansive humanity, since it seeks to find in 
every nation and creed the imperishable doctrines. 
I find myself always struck and stimulated by a 
good anecdote, any trait of heroism, of faithful 
service. I do not find that the age or country 
makes the least difference ; no, nor the language the 
actors spoke, nor the religion which they professed, 
whether Arab in the desert, or Frenchman in the 
Academy. I see that sensible men and consci- 
entious men all over the world were of one relig- 
ion, — the religion of well-doing and daring, men 
of sturdy truth, men of integrity and feeling for 
others. My inference is that there is a statement 
of religion possible which makes all skepticism ab- 
surd. 

The health and welfare of man consist in ascent 
from surfaces to solids ; from occupation with de- 
tails to knowledge of the design ; from self-activity 
of talents, which lose their way by the lust of dis- 
play, to the controlling and reinforcing of talents 
by the emanation of character. All that we call 
religion, all that saints and churches and Bibles 
from the beginning of the world have aimed at, is 



216 THE PREACHER. 

to suppress this impertinent snrface-action, and aiv 
imate man to central and entire aetion. The human 
race are afflicted with a St. Vitus' dance ; their fin- 
gers and toes, their members, their senses, their tal- 
ents, are superfluously active, while the torpid heart 
gives no oracle. When that wakes, it will revolu= 
lionize the world. Let that speak, and all these 
rebels will fly to their loyalty. Now every man de- 
feats his own action, — professes this but practises 
the reverse; with one hand rows, and with the 
other backs water. A man acts not from one mo- 
tive, but from many shifting fears and short mo- 
tives ; it is as if he were ten or twenty less men 
than himself, acting at discord with one another, 
so that the result of most lives is zero. But when 
he shall act from one motive, and all his faculties 
play true, it is clear mathematically, is it not, that 
this will tell in the result as if twenty men had co- 
operated, — will give new senses, new wisdom of its 
own kind ; that is, not more facts, nor new combi- 
nations, but divination, or direct intuition of the 
state of men and things ? 

The lessons of the moral sentiment arc, once for 
all, an emancipation from that anxiety which takes 
the joy out of all life. It teaches a great peace. It 
comes itself from the highest place. It is that, 
which being in all sound natures, and strongest in 
the best and most gifted men, we know to be im- 



THE PREACHER. 217 

planted by the Creator of Men. It is a command- 
ment at every moment and in every condition of life 
to do the duty of that moment and to abstain from 
doing the wrong. And it is so near and inward and 
constitutional to each, that no commandment can 
compare with it in authority. All wise men regard 
it as the voice of the Creator himself. 

I know there are those to whom the question of 
what shall be believed is the more interesting be- 
cause they are to proclaim and teach what they 
believe. 

All positive rules, ceremonial, ecclesiastical, dis- 
tinctions of race or of person, are perishable ; only 
those distinctions hold which are in the nature of 
things, not matters of positive ordinance. As the 
earth we stand upon is not imperishable, but is 
chemically resolvable into gases and nebulae, so is 
the universe an infinite series of planes, each of 
which is a false bottom ; and, when we think our 
feet are planted now at last on adamant, the slide 
is drawn out from under us. 

We must reconcile ourselves to the new order of 
things. But is it a calamity ? The poet "Words- 
worth greeted even the steam-engine and railroads ; 
and when they came into his poetic Westmoreland, 
bisecting every delightful valley, deforming every 
consecrated grove, yet manned himself to say : — 



218 THE PREACHER 

** In spite of all that Beauty may disown 
In your harsh features, Nature doth embrace 
Her lawful offspring in man's art, and Time, 
Pleased with your triumphs o'er his brother Space, 
Accepts from your bold hands the proffered crown 
Of hope, and smiles on you with cheer sublime." 

And we can keep our religion, despite of the vio- 
lent railroads of generalization, whether French or 
German, that block and intersect our old parish 
highways. 

In matters of religion, men eagerly fasten their 
eyes on the differences between their creed and 
yours, whilst the charm of the study is in finding 
the agreements and identities in all the religions 
of men. What is essential to the theologian is, 
that whilst he is select in his opinions, severe in his 
search for truth, he shall be broad in his sympa- 
thies, — not to allow himself to be excluded from 
any church. He is to claim for his own whatever 
eloquence of St. Chrysostom or St. Jerome or St. 
Bernard he has felt. So not less of Bishop Taylor 
or George Herbert or Henry Scougal. He sees 
that what is most effective in the writer is what is 
dear to his, the reader's, mind. 

Be not betrayed into undervaluing the churches 
which annoy you by their bigoted claims. They 
too were real churches. They answered to their 
times the same need as your rejection of them does 



THE PREACHER. 219 

to ours. The Catholic Church has been immensely 
rich in men and influences. Augustine, a Kempis, 
Fenelon, breathe the very spirit which now fires 
you. So with Cudworth, More, Bunyan. I agree 
with them more than I disagree. I agree with 
their heart and motive ; my discontent is with their 
limitations and surface and language. Their state- 
ment is grown as fabulous as Dante's Inferno. 
Their purpose is as real as Dante's sentiment and 
hatred of vice. Always put the best interpretation 
on a tenet. Why not on Christianity, wholesome, 
sweet and poetic ? It is the record of a pure and 
holy soul, humble, absolutely disinterested, a truth- 
speaker and bent on serving, teaching and uplift- 
ing men. Christianity taught the capacity, the 
element, to love the All-perfect without a stingy 
bargain for personal happiness. It taught that to 
love him was happiness, — to love him in other's 
virtues. 

An era in human history is the life of Jesus ; and 
the immense influence for good leaves all the per- 
version and superstition almost harmless. Man- 
kind have been subdued to the acceptance of his 
doctrine, and cannot spare the benefit of so pure a 
servant of truth and love. 

Of course a hero so attractive to the hearts of 
millions drew the hypocrite and the ambitious into 
his train, and they used his name to falsify his his- 



220 THE PREACHER, 

tory and undo his work. I fear that what is called 
religion, but is perhaps pew-holding, not obeys but 
conceals the moral sentiment. I put it to this sim- 
ple test: Is a rich rogue made to feel his roguery 
among divines or literary men ? No ? Then 't is 
rogue again under the cassock. What sort of re- 
spect can these preachers or newspapers inspire by 
their weekly praises of texts and saints, when we 
know that they would say just the same things if 
Beelzebub had written the chapter, provided it 
stood where it does in the public opinion ? 

Anything but unbelief, anything but losing hold 
of the moral intuitions, as betrayed in the clinging 
to a form of devotion or a theological dogma ; as if 
it was the liturgy, or the chapel, that was sacred, 
and not justice and humility and the loving heart 
and serving hand. 

But besides the passion and interest which per- 
vert, is the shallowness which impoverishes. The 
opinions of men lose all worth to him who perceives 
that they are accurately predictable from the 
ground of their sect. Nothing is more rare, in any 
man, than an act of his own. The clergy are as 
like as peas. I cannot tell them apart. It was 
said : They have bronchitis because they read from 
their papers sermons with a near voice, and then, 
looking at the congregation, they try to speak with 
their far voice, and the shock is noxious. I think 



THE PREACHER. 221 

they do this, or the converse of this, with their 
thought. They look into Plato, or into the mind, 
and then try to make parish mince-meat of the 
amplitudes and eternities, and the shock is noxious. 
It is the old story again : once we had wooden chal- 
ices and golden priests, now we have golden chal- 
ices and wooden priests. 

The clergy are always in danger of becoming 
wards and pensioners of the so-called producing 
classes. Their first duty is self-possession founded 
on knowledge. The man of practice or worldly 
force requires of the preacher a talent, a force, like 
his own ; the same as his own, but wholly applied to 
the priest's things. He does not forgive an applica- 
tion in the preacher to the merchant's things. He 
wishes him to be such a one as he himself should 
have been, had he been priest. He is sincere and 
ardent in his vocation, and plunged in it. Let 
priest or poet be as good in theirs. 

The simple fact that the pulpit exists, that all 
over this country the people are waiting to hear a 
sermon on Sunday, assures that opportunity which 
is inestimable to young men, students of theology, 
for those large liberties. The existence of the Sun- 
day, and the pulpit waiting for a weekly sermon, 
give him the very conditions, the irov cttw he wants. 
That must be filled, and he is armed to fill it. Let 
him value his talent as a door into Nature. Let him 



222 THE PREACHER. 

see his performances only as limitations. Then, 
over all, let him value the sensibility that receives, 
that loves, that dares, that affirms. 

There are always plenty of young, ignorant peo- 
ple, — though some of them are seven, and some of 
them seventy years old, — wanting peremptorily 
instruction ; but, in the usual averages of parishes, 
only one person that is qualified to give it. It is 
only that person who concerns me, — him only that 
I see. The others are very amiable and promising, 
but they are only neuters in the hive, — every one 
a possible royal bee, but not now significant. It 
does not signify what they say or think to-day ; 't is 
the cry and the babble of the nursery, and their 
only virtue, docility. Buckminster, Channing, Dr. 
Lowell, Edward Taylor, Parker, Bushnell, Chapin, 
— it is they who have been necessary, and the 
opinions of the floating crowd of no importance 
whatever. 

I do not love sensation preaching, — the person- 
alities for spite, the hurrah for our side, the re- 
view of our appearances and what others say of us ! 
That you may read in the gazette. We come to 
church properly for self-examination, for approach 
to principles to see how it stands with ws, with the 
deep and dear facts of right and love. At the 
same time it is impossible to pay no regard to the 
day's events, to the public opinion of the times, to 



THE PREACHER. 223 

the stirring shouts of parties, to the calamities and 
prosperities of our town and country ; to war and 
peace, new events, great personages, to good har- 
vests, new resources, to bankruptcies, famines and 
desolations. We are not stocks or stones, we are 
not thinking machines, but allied to men around 
us, as really though not quite so visibly as the Si- 
amese brothers. And it were inhuman to affect 
ignorance or indifference on Sundays to what makes 
aur blood beat and our countenance dejected Sat- 
urday or Monday. No, these are fair tests to try 
our doctrines by, and see if they are worth any- 
thing in life. The value of a principle is the num- 
ber of things it will explain ; and there is no good 
theory of disease which does not at once suggest a 
cure. 

Man proposes, but God disposes. We shall not 
very long have any part or lot in this earth, in 
whose affairs we so hotly mix, and where we feel 
and speak so energetically of our country and our 
cause. It is a comfort to reflect that the gigantic 
evils which seem to us so mischievous and so in- 
curable will at last end themselves and rid the 
world of their presence, as all crime sooner or later 
must. But be that event for us soon or late, we 
are not excused from playing our short part in the 
best manner we can, no matter how insignificant 
our aid may be. Our children will be here, if we 



224 THE PREACHER. 

are not ; and their children's history will be colored 
by our action. But if we have no children, or if 
the events in which we have taken our part shall 
not see their solution until a distant future, there 
is yet a deeper fact ; that as much justice as we 
can see and practise is useful to men, and impera- 
tive, whether we can see it to be useful or not. 

The essential gi'ound of a new book or a new 
sermon is a new spirit. The author has a new 
thought, sees the sweep of a more comprehensive 
tendency than others are aware of ; falters never, 
but takes the victorious tone. For power is not so 
much shown in talent as in tone. And if I had 
to counsel a young preacher, I should say : When 
there is any difference felt between the foot-board 
of the pulpit and the floor of the parlor, you have 
not yet said that which you should say. 

Inspiration will have advance, affirmation, the 
forward foot, the ascending state ; it will be an 
opener of doors ; it will invent its own methods : 
the new wine will make the bottles new. Spirit is 
motive and ascending. Only let there be a deep 
observer, and he will make light of new shop and 
new circumstance that afflict you; new shop, or 
old cathedral, it is all one to him. He will find the 
circumstance not altered, as deep a cloud of mys- 
tery on the cause, as dazzling a glory on the invin- 
cible law. Given the insight, and he will find as 



THE PREACHER. 225 

many beauties and heroes and strokes of genius 
close by him as Dante or Shakspeare beheld. A 
vivid thought brings the power to paint it ; and in 
proportion to the depth of its source is the force of 
its projection. We are happy and enriched ; we go 
away invigorated, assisted each in our own work, 
however different, and shall not forget to come 
again for new impulses. 

The supposed embarrassments to young clergy- 
men exist only to feeble wills. They need not 
consider them. The differences of opinion, the 
strength of old sects or timorous literalists, since it 
is not armed with prisons or fagots as in ruder 
times or countries, is not worth considering except 
as furnishing a needed stimulus. That gray dea- 
con or respectable matron with Calvinistic anteced- 
ents, you can readily see, could not . have presented 
any obstacle to the march of St. Bernard or of 
George Fox, of Luther or of Theodore Parker. 
And though I observe the deafness to counsel 
among men, yet the power of sympathy is always 
great ; and affirmative discourse, presuming assent, 
will often obtain it when argument would fail. 
Such, too, is the active power of good temperament. 
Great sweetness of temper neutralizes such vast 
amounts of acid! As for position, the position is 
always the same, — insulting the timid, and not 
taken by storm, but flanked, I may say, by the reso- 

VOL. X. 15 



226 THE PREACHER 

lute, simply by minding their own afPair. Speak 
the affirmative ; emphasize your choice by utter ig- 
noring of all that you reject ; seeing that opinions 
are temporary, but convictions uniform and eter- 
nal, — seeing that a sentiment never loses its pathos 
or its persuasion, but is youthful after a thousand 
years. 

The inevitable course of remark for us, when we 
meet each other for meditation on life and duty, is 
not so much the enjoining of this or that cure or 
burning out of our errors of practice, as simply the 
celebration of the power and beneficence amid which 
and by which we live, not critical, but affirmative. 

All civil mankind have agreed in leaving one day 
for contemplation against six for practice. I hope 
that day will keep its honor and its use. A wise 
man advises that we should see to it that we read 
and speak two or three reasonable words, every day, 
amid the crowd of affairs and the noise of trifles. 
I should say boldly that we should astonish every 
day by a beam out of eternity ; retire a moment to 
the grand secret we carry in our bosom, of inspira- 
tion from heaven. But certainly on this seventh 
let us be the children of liberty, of reason, of hope ; 
refresh the sentiment ; think as spirits think, who 
belong to the universe, whilst our feet walk in the 
streets of a little town and our hands work in a 
small knot of affairs. We shall find one result, 1 



THE PREACHER. 227 

am sure, — a certain originality and a certain 
haughty liberty proceeding out of our retirement 
and self-communion, which streets can never give, 
infinitely removed from all vaporing and bravado, 
and which yet is more than a match for any physi- 
cal resistance. It is true that which they say of 
our New England oestrum, which will never let us 
stand or sit, but drives us like mad through the 
world. The calmest and most protected life can- 
not save us. We want some intercalated days, to 
bethink us and to derive order to our life from the 
heart. That should be the use of the Sabbath, — 
to check this headlong racing and put us in posses- 
sion of ourselves once more, for love or for shame. 

The Sabbath changes its forms from age to age, 
but the substantial benefit endures. We no longer 
recite the old creeds of Athanasius or Arius, of 
Calvin or Hopkins. The forms are flexible, but 
the uses not less real. The old heart remains as 
ever with its old human duties. The old intellect 
still lives, to pierce the shows to the core. Truth 
is simple, and will not be antique ; is ever present, 
and insists on being of this age and of this moment. 
Here is thought and love and truth and duty, new 
as on the first day of Adam and of angels. 

" There are two pairs of eyes in man ; and it is 
requisite that the pair which are beneath should be 
closed when the pair that are above them perceive ; 



228 THE PREACHER. 

and that when the pair above are closed, those which 
are beneath are opened." The lower eyes see only 
surfaces and effects, the upper eyes behold causes 
and the connection of things. And when we go 
alone, or come into the house of thought and wor- 
ship, we come with purpose to be disabused of ap- 
pearances, to see realities, the great lines of our 
destiny, to see that life has no caprice or fortune, 
is no hopping squib, but a growth after immutable 
laws under beneficent influences the most immense. 
The Church is open to great and small in all na- 
tions ; and how rare and lofty, how unattainable, 
are the aims it labors to set before men ! We come 
to educate, come to isolate, to be abstractionists; in 
fine, to open the upper eyes to the deep mystery of 
cause and effect, to know that though ministers of 
justice and power fail. Justice and Power fail never. 
The open secret of the world is the art of subliming 
a private soul with inspirations from the great and 
public and divine Soul from which we live. 



THE MAN OF LETTERS. 



On bravely through the sunshine and the showers, 
Time hath his work to do, and we have ours- 



So nigh is grandeur to our dust, 

So near is God to man ; 
When Duty whispers low * Thou must,* 

The youth replies, ' I can.* 



THE MAN OF LETTERS. 

AN ADDRESS DELIVERED BEFORE THE LITERARY SOCIETIES 
OP WATERVILLE COLLEGE, 1863. 



Gentlemen of the Literary Societies : — 

Some of you are to-day saying your farewells to 
each other, and to-morrow will receive the parting 
honors of the College. You go to be teachers, to 
become physicians, lawyers, divines ; in due course, 
statesmen, naturalists, philanthropists ; I hope, some 
of you, to be the men of letters, critics, philoso- 
phers ; perhaps the rare gift of poetry already spar- 
kles, and may yet burn. At all events, before the 
shadows of these times darken over your youthful 
sensibility and candor, let me use the occasion which 
your kind request gives me, to offer you some coun- 
sels which an old scholar may without pretension 
bring to youth, in regard to the career of letters, — 
the power and joy that belong to it, and its high 
office in evil times. I offer perpetual congratulation 
to the scholar ; he has drawn the white lot in life. 
The very disadvantages of his condition point at 
superiorities. He is too good for the world ; he is 



232 THE MAN OF LETTERS. 

in advance of his race ; his function is prophetic. 
He belongs to a superior society, and is born one 
or two centuries too early for the rough and sensual 
population into which he is thrown. But the 
Heaven which sent him hither knew that well 
enough, and sent him as a leader to lead. Are men 
perplexed with evil times ? The inviolate soul is 
in perpetual telegraphic communication with the 
source of events. He has earlier information, a 
private despatch which relieves him of the terror 
which presses on the rest of the community. He is 
a learner of the laws of nature and the experiences 
of history ; a prophet surrendered with seK-aban- 
doning sincerity to the Heaven which pours through 
him its will to mankind. This is the theory, but 
you know how far this is from the fact, that nothing 
has been able to resist the tide with which the mate- 
rial prosperity of America in years past has beat 
down the hope of youth, the piety of learning. The 
country was full of activity, with its wheat, coal, 
iron, cotton ; the wealth of the globe was here, too 
much work and not men enough to do it. Britain, 
France, Germany, Scandinavia sent millions of la- 
borers ; still the need was more. Every kind of 
skill was in demand, and the bribe came to men of 
intellectual culture, — Come, drudge in our mill. 
America at large exhibited such a confusion as CaL 
ifornia showed in 1849, when the cry of gold was 



THE MAN OF LETTERS. 233 

first raised. All the distinctions of profession and 
habit ended at the mines. All the world took off 
their coats and worked in shirt-sleeves. Lawyers 
went and came with pick and wheelbarrow ; doctors 
of medicine turned teamsters ; stray clergymen kept 
the bar in saloons ; professors of colleges sold cigars, 
mince-pies, matches, and so on. It is the perpetual 
tendency of wealth to draw on the spiritual class, 
not in this coarse way, but in plausible and covert 
ways. It is charged that all vigorous nations, ex- 
cept our own, have balanced their labor by mental 
activity, and especially by the imagination, — the 
cardinal human power, the angel of earnest and be- 
lieving ages. The subtle Hindoo, who carried re- 
ligion to ecstasy and philosophy to idealism, pro- 
duced the wonderful epics of which, in the present 
century, the translations have added new regions to 
thought. The Egyptian built Thebes and Karnak 
on a scale which dwarfs our art, and by the paint- 
inofs on their interior walls invited us into the secret 
of the religious belief whence he drew such power. 
The Greek was so perfect in action and in imagi- 
nation, his poems, from Homer to Euripides, so 
charming in form and so true to the human mind, 
that we cannot forget or outgrow their mythology. 
The Hebrew nation compensated for the insignifi- 
cance of its members and territory by its religious 
genius, its tenacious belief ; its poems and histories 



234 THE MAN OF LETTERS. 

cling to the soil of this globe like the primitive 
rocks. On the south and east shores of the Medi- 
terranean Mahomet impressed his fierce genius how 
deeply into the manners, language and poetry of 
Arabia and Persia ! See the activity of the imagi- 
nation in the Crusades : the front of morn was full 
of fiery shapes ; the chasm was bridged over ; heaven 
walked on earth, and Earth could see with eyes the 
Paradise and the Inferno. Dramatic " mysteries " 
were the entertainment of the people. Parliaments 
of Love and Poesy served them, instead of the 
House of Commons, Congress and the newspapers. 
In Puritanism, how the whole Jewish history be- 
came flesh and blood in those men, let Bunyan show. 
Now it is agreed that we are utilitarian ; that we 
are skeptical, frivolous; that with universal cheap 
education we have stringent theology, but religion 
is low. There is much criticism, not on deep 
grounds, but an affirmative philosophy is wanting. 
Our profoundest philosophy (if it were not contra- 
diction in terms) is skepticism. The great poem of 
the age is the disagreeable poem of " Faust," — of 
which the " Festus " of Bailey and the " Paracel- 
sus " of Browning are English variations. We 
have superficial sciences, restless, gossiping, aimless 
activity. We run to Paris, to London, to Rome, to 
Mesmerism, Spiritualism, to Pusey, to the Catholic 
Church, as if for the want of thought, and those 



THE MAN OF LETTERS. 235 

who would check and guide have a dreary feeling 
that in the change and decay of the old creeds and 
motives there was no offset to supply their place. 
Our industrial skill, arts ministering to convenience 
and luxury, have made life expensive, and there- 
fore greedy, careful, anxious ; have turned the eyes 
downward to the earth, not upward to thought. 

Ernest Renan finds that Europe has thrice as- 
sembled for exhibitions of industry, and not a poem 
graced the occasion ; and nobody remarked the de- 
fect. A French prophet of our age, Fourier, pre- 
dicted that one day, instead of by battles and 
(Ecumenical Councils, the rival portions of human- 
ity would dispute each other's excellence in the 
manufacture of little cakes. 

"In my youth," said a Scotch mountaineer, "a 
Highland gentleman measured his importance by 
the number of men his domain could support. 
After some time the question was, to know how 
many great cattle it would feed. To-day we are 
come to count the number of sheep. I suppose 
posterity will ask how many rats and mice it will 
feed." 

Dickens complained that in America, as soon as 
he arrived in any of the Western towns, a committee 
waited on him and invited him to deliver a temper- 
ance lecture. Bowditch translated Laplace, and 
when he removed to Boston, the Hospital Life As- 



236 THE MAN OF LETTERS. 

surance Company insisted that he should make 
their tables of annuities. Napoleon knows the art 
of war, but should not be put on picket duty. 
Linnaeus or Robert Brown must not be set to raise 
gooseberries and cucumbers, though they be excel- 
lent botanists. A shrewd broker out of State 
Street visited a quiet countryman possessed of all 
the virtues, and in his glib talk said, " With your 
character now I could raise all this money at once, 
and make an excellent thing of it." 

There is an oracle current in the world, that na- 
tions die by suicide. The sign of it is the decay 
of thought. Niebuhr has given striking examples 
of that fatal portent ; as in the loss of power of 
thought that followed the disasters of the Athe- 
nians in Sicily. 

I cannot forgive a scholar his homeless despond- 
ency. He represents intellectual or spiritual force. 
I wish him to rely on the spiritual arm ; to live by 
his strength, not by his weakness. A scholar de- 
fending the cause of slavery, of arbitrary govern- 
ment, of monopoly, of the oppressor, is a traitor to 
his profession. He has ceased to be a scholar. He 
is not company for clean people. The worst times 
only show him how independent he is of times ; 
only relieve and bring out the splendor of his priv- 
ilege. Disease alarms the family, but the physi- 
cian sees in it a temporary mischief, which he can 



THE MAN OF LETTERS. 237 

check and expel. The fears and agitations of men 
who watch the markets, the crops, the plenty or 
scarcity of money, or other superficial events, are 
not for him. He knows that the world is always 
equal to itself ; that the forces which uphold and 
pervade it are eternal. Air, water, fire, iron, gold, 
wheat, electricity, animal fibre, have not lost a par- 
ticle of power, and no decay has crept over the spir- 
itual force which gives bias and period to bound- 
less nature. Bad times, — what are bad times ? 
Nature is rich, exuberant, and mocks at the puny 
forces of destruction. Man makes no more im- 
pression on her wealth than the caterpillar or the 
cankerworm whose petty ravage, though noticed in 
an orchard or a village, is insignificant in the vast 
exuberance of the summer. There is no unem- 
ployed force in Nature. All decomposition is re- 
composition. War disorganizes, but it is to reorgan- 
ize. Weeks, months pass — a new harvest ; trade 
springs up, and there stand new cities, new homes, 
all rebuilt and sleepy with permanence. Italy, 
France — a hundred times those countries have 
been trampled with armies and burned over : a few 
summers, and they smile with plenty and yield new 
men and new revenues. 

If churches are effete, it is because the new 
Heaven forms. You are here as the carriers of the 
power of Nature, — as Roger Bacon, with his secret 



238 THE MAN OF LETTERS. 

of gunpowder, with his secret of the balloon and of 
steam ; as Copernicus, with his secret of the true 
astronomy ; as Columbus, with America in his log- 
book ; as Newton, with his gravity ; Harvey, with 
his circulation ; Smith, with his law of trade ; Frank- 
lin, with lightning; Adams, with Independence; 
Kant, with pure reason ; Swedenborg, with his spir- 
itual world. You are the carriers of ideas which 
are to fashion the mind and so the history of this 
breathing world, so as they shall be, and not other- 
wise. 

Every man is a scholar potentially, and does not 
need any one good so much as this of right thought. 

" Calm pleasures here abide, majestic paiiis." 

Coleridge traces "three silent revolutions," of 
which the first was " when the clergy fell from the 
Church." A scholar was once a priest. But the 
Church clung to ritual, and the scholar clung to 
joy, low as well as high, and thus the separation 
was a mutual fault. But I think it is a schism 
which must be healed. The true scholar is the 
Church. Only the duties of Intellect must be 
owned. Down with these dapper trimmers and 
sycophants ! let us have masculine and divine men, 
formidable lawgivers, Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle, 
who warp the churches of the world from their tra- 
ditions, and penetrate them through and through 



THE MAN OF LETTERS. 239 

with original perception. The intellectual man 
lives in perpetual victory. As certainly as water 
falls in rain on the tops of mountains and runs 
down into valleys, plains and pits, so does thought 
fall first on the best minds, and run down, from 
class to class, until it reaches the masses, and works 
revolutions. 

Nature says to the American : " I understand 
mensuration and numbers ; I compute the ellipse 
of the moon, the ebb and flow of waters, the curve 
and the errors of planets, the balance of attrac- 
tion and recoil. I have measured out to you by 
weight and tally the powers you need. I give you 
the land and sea, the forest and the mine, the ele- 
mental forces, nervous energy. When I add diffi- 
culty, I add brain. See to it that you hold and ad- 
minister the continent for mankind. One thins: 
you have rightly done. You have offered a patch 
of land in the wilderness to every son of Adam who 
will till it. Other things you have begun to do, — 
to strike off the chains which snuffling hypocrites 
had bound on the weaker race. You are to im- 
peril your lives and fortunes for a principle. The 
ambassador is held to maintain the dignity of the 
Eepublic which he represents. But what does the 
scholar represent ? The organ of ideas, the subtle 
force which creates Nature and men and states ; 
— consoler, upholder, imparting pulses of light and 



240 THE MAN OF LETTERS. 

shocks of electricity, guidance and courage. So let 
his habits be formed, and all his economies heroic ; 
no spoiled child, no drone, no epicure, but a stoic, 
formidable, athletic, knowing how to be poor, lov- 
ing labor, and not flogging his youthful wit with 
tobacco and wine ; treasuring his youth. I wish the 
youth to be an armed and complete man ; no help- 
less angel to be slapped in the face, but a man 
dipped in the Styx of human experience, and made 
invulnerable so, — self -helping. A redeeming trait 
of the Sophists of Athens, Hippias and Gorgias, is 
that they made their own clothes and shoes. Learn 
to harness a horse, to row a boat, to camp down in 
the woods, to cook your supper. I chanced lately 
to be at West Point, and, after attending the exam- 
ination in scientific classes, I went into the barracks. 
The chamber was in perfect order ; the mattress on 
the iron camp-bed rolled up, as if ready for removal. 
I asked the first Cadet, " Who makes your bed ? " 
"I do." "Who fetches your water?" "I do." 
"Who blacks your shoes?" "I do." It was so 
in every room. These are first steps to power. 
Learn of Samuel Johnson or David Hume, that it 
is a primary duty of the man of letters to secure his 
independence. 

Stand by your order. 'Tis some thirty years 
since the days of the Reform Bill in England, when 
on the walls in London you read everywhere plac- 



THE MAN OF LETTERS. 241 

ards, " Down with the Lords." At that time, Earl 
Grey, who was leader of Reform, was asked, in Par- 
liament, his policy on the measures of the Radicals. 
He replied, " I shall stand by my order." Where 
there is no vision, the people perish. The fault lies 
with the educated class, the men of study and 
thought. There is a very low feeling of duty : the 
merchant is true to the merchant, the noble in Eng- 
land and Europe stands by his order, the politician 
believes in his arts and combinations ; but the 
scholar does not stand by his order, but defers to 
the men of this world. 

Gentlemen, I am here to commend to you your 
art and profession as thinkers. It is real. It is the 
secret of power. It is the art of command. AU su- 
periority is this, or related to this. " AU that the 
world admires comes from within." Thought makes 
us men ; ranks us ; distributes society ; distributes 
the work of the world ; is the prolific source of all 
arts, of aU wealth, of all delight, of all grandeur. 
Men are as they believe. Men are as they think, 
and the man who knows any truth not yet discerned 
by other men, is master of all other men so far as 
that truth and its wide relations are concerned. 

Intellect measures itseK by its counteraction to 
any accumulation of material force. There is no 
mass which it cannot surmount and dispose of< 
The exertions of this force are the eminent experi- 

VOL. X. 16 



242 THE MAN OF LETTERS. 

ences, — out of a long life all that is worth remem. 
bering. These are the moments that balance years. 
Does any one doubt between the strength of a 
thought and that of an institution ? Does any one 
doubt that a good general is better than a park of 
artillery? See a political revolution dogging a 
book. See armies, institutions, literatures, appear- 
ing in the train of some wild Arabian's dream. 

There is a proverb that Napoleon, when the Mam- 
eluke cavalry approached the French lines, ordered 
the grenadiers to the front, and the asses and the 
savans to fall into the hollow square. It made a 
good story, and circulated in that day. But how 
stands it now ? The military expedition was a fail- 
ure. Bonaparte himself deserted, and the army got 
home as it could, all fruitless ; not a trace of it re- 
mains. All that is left of it is the researches of 
those savans on the antiquities of Egypt, including 
the great work of Denon, which led the way to aU 
the subsequent studies of the English and German 
scholars on that foundation. Pytheas of ^gina 
was victor in the Pancratium of the boys, at the 
Isthmian games. He came to the poet Pindar and 
wished him to write an ode in his praise, and in- 
quired what was the price of a poem. Pindar re- 
plied that he should give him one talent, about a 
thousand dollars of our money. " A talent ! " cried 
Pytheas ; " why, for so much money I can erect a 



THE MAN OF LLTTERS. 243 

statue of bronze in the temple." " Very likeiyc" 
On second thoughts, he returned and paid for the 
poem. And now not only all the statues of bronze 
in the temples of ^gina are destroyed, but the 
temples themselves, and the very walls of the city 
are utterly gone, whilst the ode of Pindar, in praise 
of Pytheas, remains entire. 

The treachery of scholars ! They are idealists, 
and should stand for freedom, justice, and public 
good. The scholar is bound to stand for all the 
virtues and all the liberties, — liberty of trade, lib- 
erty of the press, liberty of religion, — and he 
should open all the prizes of success and all the 
roads of Nature to free competition. 

The country complains loudly of the inefficiency 
of the army. It was badly led. But, before this, 
it was not the army alone, it was the population that 
was badly led. The clerisy, the spiritual guides, 
the scholars, the seers have been false to their 
trust. 

Eely on yourself. There is respect due to your 
teachers, but every age is new, and has problems 
to solve, insoluble by the last age. Men over forty 
are no judges of a book written in a new spirit. 
Neither your teachers, nor the universal teachers, 
the laws, the customs or dogmas of nations, neither 
saint nor sage, can compare with that counsel which 
is open to you. No, it is not nations, no, nor even 



244 THE MAN OF LETTERS. 

masters, not at last a few individuals or any heroes, 
but himself only, the large equality to truth of a 
single mind, — as if, in the narrow walls of a human 
heart, the wide realm of truth, the world of morals, 
the tribunal by which the universe is judged, found 
room to exist. 

Our people have this levity and complaisance, — 
they fear to offend, do not wish to be misunderstood ; 
do not wish, of all things, to be in the minority. 
God and Nature are altogether sincere, and Art 
should be as sincere. It is not enough that the work 
should show a skilful hand, ingenious contrivance 
and admirable polish and finish ; it should have a 
commanding motive in the time and condition in 
which it was made. We should see in it the great 
belief of the artist, which caused him to make it so 
as he did, and not otherwise ; nothing frivolous, 
nothing that he might do or not do, as he chose, but 
somewhat that must be done then and there by 
him ; he could not take his neck out of that yoke, 
and save his soul. And this design must shine 
through the whole performance. Sincerity is, in 
dangerous times, discovered to be an immeasurable 
advantage. I distrust all the legends of great ac- 
complishments or performance of unprincipled men. 
Very little reliance must be put on the common sto- 
ries that circulate of this great senator's or that 
great barrister's learning, their Greek, their varied 
literature. That ice won't bear. Reading ! — do 



THE MAN OF LETTERS. 245 

you mean that this senator or this lawyer, who stood 
by and allowed the passage of infamous laws, was a 
reader of Greek books ? That is not the question ; 
but to what purpose did they read ? I allow them 
the merit of that reading which appears in their 
opinions, tastes, beliefs, and practice. They read 
that they might know, did they not ? Well, these 
men did not know. They blundered ; they were 
utterly ignorant of that which every boy or girl of 
fifteen knows perfectly, — the rights of men and 
women. And this big-mouthed talker, among his 
dictionaries and Leipzic editions of Lysias, had lost 
his knowledge. But the President of the Bank 
nods to the President of the Insurance Office, and 
relates that at Virginia Springs this idol of the 
forum exhausted a trunkful of classic authors. 
There is always the previous question. How came 
you on that side ? You are a very elegant writer, 
but you can't write up what gravitates down. 

It is impossible to extricate oneself from the 
questions in which our age is involved. All of us 
have shared the new enthusiasm of country and of 
liberty which swept like a whirlwind through all 
souls at the outbreak of war, and brought, by enno- 
bling us, an offset for its calamity. 

War, seeking for the roots of strength, comes upon 
the moral aspects at once. In quiet times, custom sti- 
fles this discussion as sentimental, and brings in the 
brazen devil, as by immemorial right. The war up- 



246 THE MAN OF LETTERS. 

lifted us into generous sentiments. War ennobles 
the age. We do not often have a moment of gran- 
deur in these hurried, slipshod lives, but the be- 
havior of the young men has taught us much. We 
will not again disparage America, now that we have 
seen what men it will bear. Battle, with the sword, 
has cut many a Gordian knot in twain which all 
the wit of East and West, of Northern and Border 
statesmen could not untie. 

I learn with joy and with deep respect that this 
college has sent its full quota to the field. I learn 
with grief, but with honoring pain, that you have 
had your sufferers in the battle, and that the noble 
youth have returned wounded and maimed. The 
times are dark, but heroic. The times develop the 
strength they need. Boys are heroes. Women 
have shown a tender patriotism and inexhaustible 
charity. And on each new threat of faction, the 
ballot of the people has been unexpectedly right. 
But the issues already appearing overpay the cost. 
Slavery is broken, and, if we use our advantage, ir- 
retrievably. For such a gain, to end once for all 
that pest of all our free institutions, one generation 
might well be sacrificed ; perhaps it will ; that this 
continent be purged and a new era of equal rights 
dawn on the universe. Who would not, if it could 
be made certain that the new morning of universal 
liberty should rise on our race by the perishing of 
one generation, — who would not consent to die? 



THE SCHOLAR. 



For thought, and not praise, 

Thought is the wages 
For which I sell days, 

Will gladly sell ages 

And willing grow old, 

Deaf and dumb, blind and cold. 
Melting matter into dreams, 
Panoramas which I saw. 
And whatever glows or seems 

Into substance, into Law. 



The sun and moon shall fall amain 
Like sowers' seeds into his brain, 
There quickened to be born again. 






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THE SCHOLAK. 



AN ORATION DELIVERED BEFORE THE WASHINGTON AND 
JEFFERSON SOCIETIES AT THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA, 
28th JUNE, 1876. 

Gentlemen : 

The Athenians took an oath, on a certain crisis 
in their affairs, to esteem wheat, the vine and the 
olive the bounds of Attica. The territory of schol- 
ars is yet larger. A stranger but yesterday to every 
person present, I find myself already at home, for 
the society of lettered men is a university which 
does not bound itself with the walls of one cloister 
or college, but gathers-in the distant and solitary 
student into its strictest amity. Literary men gladly 
acknowledge these ties which find for the homeless 
and the stranger a welcome where least looked for. 
But in proportion as we are conversant with the laws 
of life, we have seen the like. We are used to these 
surprises. This is but one operation of a more gen- 
eral law. As in coming among strange faces we 
find that the love of letters makes us friends, so in 
strange thoughts, in the worldly habits which harden 
us, we find with some surprise that learning and 



250 THE SCHOLAR, 

truth and beauty have not let us go ; that the spir- 
itual nature is too strong for us ; that those excellent 
influences which men in all ages have called the 
Muse^ or by some kindred name, come in to keep 
us warm and true ; that the face of Nature remains 
irresistibly alluring. We have strayed from the 
territorial monuments of Attica, but here still are 
wheat and olives and the vine. 

I do not now refer to that intellectual conscience 
which forms itself in tender natures, and gives us 
many twinges for our sloth and unfaithfulness : — 
the influence I speak of is of a higher strain. Stung 
by this intellectual conscience, we go to measure our 
tasks as scholars, and screw ourselves up to energy 
and fidelity, and our sadness is suddenly overshone 
by a sympathy of blessing. Beauty, the inspirer, 
the cheerful festal principle, the leader of gods and 
men, which draws by being beautiful, and not by 
considerations of advantage, comes in and puts a 
new face on the world. I think the peculiar office 
of scholars in a careful and gloomy generation is to 
be (as the poets were called in the Middle Ages) 
Professors of the Joyous Science, detectors and de- 
lineators of occult symmetries and unpublished 
beauties ; heralds of civility, nobility, learning and 
wisdom ; affirmers of the one law, yet as those who 
should affirm it in music and dancing ; expressors 
themselves of that firm and cheerful temper, infi- 



THE SCHOLAR. 251 

nitely removed from sadness, which reigns through 
the kingdoms of chemistry, vegetation, and animal 
life. Every natural power exhilarates ; a true tal- 
ent delights the possessor first. A celebrated mu- 
sician was wont to say, that men knew not how 
much more he delighted himself with his playing 
than he did others ; for if they knew, his hearers 
would rather demand of him than give him a re- 
ward. The scholar is here to fill others with love 
and courage by confirming their trust in the love 
and wisdom which are at the heart of all things ; 
to affirm noble sentiments ; to hear them wherever 
spoken, out of the deeps of ages, out of the obscur- 
ities of barbarous life, and to republish them : — to 
untune nobody, but to draw all men after the truth, 
and to keep men spiritual and sweet. 

Language can hardly exaggerate the beatitude 
of the intellect flowing into the faculties. This is 
the power that makes the world incarnated in man, 
and laying again the beams of heaven and earth, 
setting the north and the south, and the stars in 
their places. Intellect is the science of metes and 
bounds ; yet it sees no bound to the eternal proceed- 
ing of law forth into nature. All the sciences are 
only new applications, each translatable into the 
other, of the one law which his mind is. 

This, gentlemen, is the topic on which I shall 
speak, — the natural and permanent function of 



252 THE SCHOLAR. 

the Scholar, as he is no permissive or accidental 
appearance, but an organic agent in nature. He 
is here to be the beholder of the real ; self-centred 
amidst the superficial ; here to revere the dominion 
of a serene necessity and be its pupil and apprentice 
by tracing everything home to a cause ; here to be 
sobered, not by the cares of life, as men say, no, 
but by the depth of his draughts of the cup of im- 
mortality. 

One is tempted to affirm the office and attributes 
of the scholar a little the more eagerly, because of a 
frequent perversity of the class itself. Men are 
ashamed of their intellect. The men committed by 
profession as well as by bias to study, the clergy- 
man, the chemist, the astronomer, the metaphysician, 
the poet, talk hard and worldly, and share the in- 
fatuation of cities. The poet and the citizen per- 
fectly agree in conversation on the wise life. The 
poet counsels his own son as if he were a merchant. 
The poet with poets betrays no amiable weakness. 
They all chime in, and are as inexorable as bankers 
on the subject of real life. They have no toleration 
for literature ; art is only a fine word for appear- 
ance in default of matter. And they sit white over 
their stoves, and talk themselves hoarse over the 
mischief of books and the effeminacy of book-mak- 
ers. But at a single strain of a bugle out of a grove, 
or at the dashing among the stones of a brook from 



THE SCHOLAR. 253 

the hills ; at the sound of some subtle word that 
falls from the lips of an imaginative person, or even 
at the reading in solitude of some moving image of 
a wise poet, this grave conclusion is blown out of 
memory; the sun shines, and the worlds roll to 
music, and the poet replaces all this cowardly SeK- 
denial and God-denial of the literary class with the 
conviction that to one poetic success the world will 
surrender on its knees. Instantly he casts in his 
lot with the pearl-diver and the diamond-merchant. 
Like them he will joyfully lose days and months, 
and estates and credit, in the profound hope that 
one restoring, all-rewarding, immense success will 
arrive at last, which will give him at one bound a 
universal dominion. And rightly ; for if his wild 
prayers are granted, if he is to succeed, his achieve- 
ment is the piercing of the brass heavens of use and 
limitation, and letting in a beam of the pure eter- 
nity which burns up this limbo of shadows and chi- 
meras in which we dwell. Yes, Nature is too strong 
for us ; she will not be denied ; she has balsams for 
our hurts, and hellebores for our insanities. She 
does not bandy words v/ith us, but comes in with a 
new ravishing experience and makes the old time 
ridiculous. Every poet knows the unspeakable 
hope, and represents its audacity. 

I am not disposed to magnify temporary differ- 
ences, but for the moment it appears as if in for- 



254 THE SCHOLAR. 

mer times learning and intellectual accomplish- 
ments had secured to the possessor greater rank 
and authority. If this were only the reaction from 
excessive expectations from literature, now disap- 
pointed, it were a just censure. It was super- 
stitious to exact too much from philosophers and 
the literary class. The Sophists, the Alexandrian 
grammarians, the wits of Queen Anne's, the phi- 
losophers and diffusion - societies have not much 
helped us. Granted, freely granted. Men run 
out of one superstition into an opposite superstition, 
and practical people in America give themselves 
wonderful airs. The cant of the time inquires 
superciliously after the new ideas; it believes that 
ideas do not lead to the owning of stocks ; they 
are perplexing and effeminating. 

Young men, I warn you against the clamors of 
these seK-praising frivolous activities, — against 
these busy-bodies ; against irrational labor ; against 
chattering, meddlesome, rich and official people. If 
their doing came to any good end ! Action is le- 
gitimate and good ; forever be it honored ! right, 
original, private, necessary action, proceeding new 
from the heart of man, and going forth to benefi- 
cent and as yet incalculable ends. Yes ; but not a 
petty fingering and running, a senseless repeating 
of yesterday's fingering and running ; an accept- 
ance of the method and frauds of other men ; an 



THE SCHOLAR. 255 

overdoing and busy-ness which pretends to the hon- 
ors of action, but resembles the twitches of St. Vitus. 
The action of these men I cannot respect, for they 
do not respect it themselves. They were better 
and more respectable abed and asleep. All the 
best of this class, all who have any insight or gen- 
erosity of spirit are frequently disgusted, and fain 
to put it behind them. 

Gentlemen, I do not wish to check your impulses 
to action : I would not hinder you of one swing of 
your arm. I do not wish to see you effeminate 
gownsmen, taking hold of the world with the tips 
of your fingers, or that life should be to you as it 
is to many, optical, not practical. Far otherwise : 
I rather wish you to experiment boldly and give 
play to your energies, but not, if I could prevail 
with you, in conventional ways. I should wish 
your energy to run in works and emergencies grow- 
ing out of your personal character. Nature will 
fast enough instruct you in the occasion and the 
need, and will bring to each of you the crowded 
hour, the great opportunity. Love, Rectitude, ev- 
erlasting Fame, will come to each of you in loneli- 
est places with their grand alternatives, and Honor 
watches to see whether you dare seize the palms. 

I have no quarrel with action, only I prefer no 
action to misaction, and 1 reject the abusive appli- 
cation of the term practical to those lower activi- 



256 THE SCHOLAR. 

ties. Let us hear no more of the practical men, or 
I will tell you something of them, — this, namely, 
that the scholar finds in them unlooked-for accept- 
ance of his most paradoxical experience. There is 
confession in their eyes, and if they parade their 
business and public importance, it is by way of 
apology and palliation for not being the students 
and obeyers of those diviner laws. Talk frankly 
with them and you learn that you have little to teU 
them ; that the Spirit of the Age has been before 
you with influences impossible to parry or resist. 
The dry-goods men, and the brokers, the lawyers 
and the manufacturers are idealists, and only differ 
from the philosopher in the intensity of the charge. 
We are all contemporaries and bones of one body. 
The shallow clamor against theoretic men comes 
from the weak. Able men may sometimes affect 
a contempt for thought, which no able man ever 
feels. For what alone in the history of this world 
interests all men in proportion as they are men ? 
What but truth, and perpetual advance in knowl- 
edge of it, and brave obedience to it in right ac- 
tion ? Every man or woman who can voluntarily 
or involuntarily give them any insight or sugges- 
tion on these secrets they will hearken after. The 
poet writes his verse on a scrap of paper, and in- 
stantly the desire and love of all mankind take 
charge of it, as if it were Holy Writ. What need 



THE SCHOLAR 257 

has he to cross the sill of his door ? Why need he 
meddle with politics ? His idlest thought, his yes- 
ternight's dream is told already in the Senate. 
What the Genius whispered him at night he re- 
ported to the young men at dawn. He rides in 
them, he traverses sea and land. The engineer in 
the locomotive is waiting for him ; the steamboat 
is hissing at the wharf, and the wheels whirling to 
go. 'T is wonderful, 't is almost scandalous, this 
extraordinary favoritism shown to poets. I do not 
mean to excuse it. I admit the enormous partial- 
ity. It only shows that such is the gulf between 
our perception and our painting, the eye is so wise, 
and the hand so clumsy, that all the human race 
have agreed to value a man according to his power 
of expression. For him arms, art, politics, trade 
waited like menials, until the lord of the manor 
should arrive. Even the demonstrations of nature 
for millenniums seem not to have attained their 
end, until this interpreter arrives. " I," said the 
great-hearted Kepler, " may well wait a hundred 
years for a reader, since God Almighty has waited 
six thousand years for an observer like myseK." 

Genius is a poor man and has no house, but see, 
this proud landlord who has built the palace and 
furnished it so delicately, opens it to him and be- 
seeches him to make it honorable by entering there 
and eating bread. Where is the palace in England 

VOL. X. 17 



258 THE SCHOLAR. 

whose tenants are not too happy if it can make a 
home for Pope or Addison or Swift or Burke or 
Canning or Tennyson ? Or if wealth has humors 
and wishes to shake off the yoke and assert itself, — 
oh, by all means let it try ! Will it build its fences 
very high, and make its Almacks too narrow for a 
wise man to enter? Will it be independent? I 
incline to concede the isolation which it asks, that it 
may learn that it is not independent but parasitical. 

There could always be traced, in the most bar- 
barous tribes, and also in the most character-de- 
stroying civilization, some vestiges of a faith in gen- 
ius, as in the exemption of a priesthood or bards 
or artists from taxes and tolls levied on other men ; 
or in civic distinction ; or in enthusiastic homage ; 
or in hospitalities ; as if men would signify their 
sense that genius and virtue should not pay money 
for house and land and bread, because they have 
a royal right in these and in all things, — a first 
mortgage that takes effect before the right of the 
present proprietor. For they are the First Good, 
of which Plato affirms that " all things are for its 
sake, and it is the cause of everything beautiful." 

This reverence is the re-establishment of natural 
order ; for as the solidest rocks are made up of in- 
visible gases, as the world is made of thickened light 
and arrested electricity, so men know that ideas are 
the parents of men and things; there was never any- 



THE SCHOLAR. 259 

thing that did not proceed from a thought. The 
scholar has a deep ideal interest in the moving show- 
around him. He knew the motley system in its 
Qgg^ We have — have we not? — a real relation 
to markets and brokers and currency and coin. 
" Gold and silver," says one of the Platonists, 
" grow in the earth from the celestial gods, — an 
effluxion from them." The unmentionable dollar 
itself has at last a high origin in moral and meta- 
physical nature. Union Pacific stock is not quite 
private property, but the quality and essence of the 
universe is in that also. Have we less interest in 
ships or in shops, in manual work or in household 
affairs ; in any object of nature, or in any handi- 
work of man ; in any relation of life or custom of 
society ? The scholar is to show, in each, identity 
and connexion ; he is to show its origin in the brain 
of man, and its secret history and issues. He is 
the attorney of the world, and can never be super- 
fluous where so vast a variety of questions are ever 
coming up to be solved, and for ages. 

I proceed to say that the allusions just now made 
to the extent of his duties, the manner in which 
every day's events will find him in work, may show 
that his place is no sinecure. The scholar, when 
he comes, will be known by an energy that will an- 
imate all who see him. The labor of ambition and 
avarice will appear fumbling beside his. In the 



260 THE SCHOLAR. 

right hands, literature is not resorted to as a con- 
solation, and by the broken and decayed, but as a 
decalogue. In this country we are fond of results 
and of short ways to them ; and most in this 
department. In our experiences, learning is not 
learned, nor is genius wise. The name of the 
Scholar is taken in vain. We who should be the 
channel of that unweariable Power which never 
sleeps, must give our diligence no holidays. Other 
men are planting and building, baking and tanning, 
running and sailing, heaving and carrying, each 
that he may peacefully execute the fine function 
by which they all are helped. Shall he play, whilst 
their eyes follow him from far with reverence, 
attributing to him the delving in great fields of 
thought, and conversing with supernatural allies? 
If he is not kindling his torch or collecting oil, he 
wiU fear to go by a workshop ; he wiU not dare to 
hear the music of a saw or plane ; the steam-engine 
will reprimand, the steam-pipe will hiss at him ; he 
cannot look a blacksmith in the eye ; in the field 
he will be shamed by mowers and reapers. The 
speculative man, the scholar, is the right hero. He 
is brave, because he sees the omnipotence of that 
which inspires him. Is there only one courage 
and one warfare? I cannot manage sword and 
rifle ; can I not therefore be brave ? I thought 
there were as many courages as men. Is an armed 



THE SCHOLAR. 261 

man the only hero ? Is a man only the breech of a 
gun or the haft of a bowie-knife ? Men of thought 
fail in fighting down malignity, because they wear 
other armor than their own. Let them decline . 
henceforward foreign methods and foreign cour- 
ages. Let them do that which they can do. Let 
them fight by their strength, not by their weakness. 
It seems to me that the thoughtful man needs no 
armor but this ~ concentration. One thing is for 
him settled, that he is to come at his ends. He is 
not there to defend himself, but to deliver his mes- 
sage; if his voice is clear, then clearly; if husky, 
then huskily ; if broken, he can at least scream ; gag 
him, he can still write it ; bruise, mutilate him, cut 
off his hands and feet, he can stiU crawl towards 
his object on his stumps. It is the corruption of 
our generation that men value a long life, and do 
not esteem life simply as a means of expressing a 

sentiment. 

The great English patriot Algernon Sidney wrote 
to his father from his prison a little before his exe- 
cution : " I have ever had in my mind that when 
God should cast me into sach a condition as that I 
cannot save my life but by doing an indecent thin- 
he shows me the time has come when I should 
resign it." Beauty belongs to the sentiment, and is 
always departing from those who depart out of that. 
The hero rises out of all comparison with contempo- 



262 THE SCHOLAR. 

raries and with ages of men, because lie disesteems 
old age, and lands, and money, and power, and will 
oppose all mankind at the call of that private and 
perfect Right and Beauty in which he lives. 

Man is a torch borne in the wind. The ends I 
have hinted at made the scholar or spiritual man 
indispensable to the Republic or Commonwealth of 
Man. Nature could not leave herself without a 
seer and expounder. But he could not see or teach 
without organs. The same necessity then that 
woidd create him reappears in his splendid gifts. 
There is no power in the mind but in turn becomes 
an instrument. The descent of genius into talents 
is part of the natural order and history of the 
world. The incarnation must be. We cannot eat 
the granite nor drink hydrogen. They must be de- 
compounded and recompounded into corn and water 
before they can enter our flesh. There is a great 
deal of spiritual energy in the universe, but it is not 
palpable to us until we can make it up into man. 
There is plenty of air, but it is worth nothing until 
by gathering it into sails we can get it into shape 
and service to carry us and our cargo across the 
sea. Then it is paid for by hundreds of thousands 
of our money. Plenty of water also, sea full, sky 
full ; who cares for it ? But when we can get it 
where we want it, and in measured portions, on a 
mill-wheel, or boat-paddle, we will buy it with mill- 



THE SCHOLAR. 263 

ions. There is plenty of wild azote and carbon 
unappropriated, but it is nought till we have made 
it up into loaves and soup. So we find it in higher 
relations. There is plenty of wild wrath, but it 
steads not until we can get it racked off, shall I say ? 
and bottled into persons ; a little pure, and not too 
much, to every head. How many young geniuses 
we have known, and none but ourselves will ever 
hear of them for want in them of a little talent ! 

Ah, gentlemen, I own I love talents and accom- 
plishments; the feet and hands of genius. As 
Burke said, " it is not only our duty to make the 
right known, but to make it prevalent." So I de- 
light to see the Godhead in distribution ; to see 
men that can come at their ends. These shrewd 
faculties belong to man. I love to see them in play, 
and to see them trained : this memory carrying in 
its caves the pictures of all the past, and rendering 
them in the instant when they can serve the pos- 
sessor ; — the craft of mathematical combination, 
which carries a working-plan of the heavens and of 
the earth in a formula. I am apt to believe, with 
the Emperor Charles V., that " as many languages 
as a man knows, so many times is he a man." I 
like to see a man of that virtue that no obscurity 
or disguise can conceal, who wins all souls to his 
way of thinking. I delight in men adorned and 
weaponed with manlike arts, who could alone, or 



264 THE SCHOLAR. 

with a few like them, reproduce Europe and Amer- 
ica, the result of our civilization. 

It is excellent when the individual is ripened to 
that degree that he touches both the centre and the 
circumference, so that he is not only widely intelli- 
gent, but carries a council in his breast for the 
emergency of to-day ; and alternates the contem- 
plation of the fact in pure intellect, with the total 
conversion of the intellect into energy ; Jove, and 
the thunderbolt launched from his hand. Perhaps I 
value power of achievement a little more because in 
America there seems to be a certain indigence in 
this respect. I think there is no more intellectual 
people than ours. They are very apprehensive and 
curious. But there is a sterility of talent. These 
iron personalities, such as in Greece and Italy and 
once in England were formed to strike fear into 
kings and draw the eager service of thousands, 
rarely appear. We have general intelligence, but 
no Cyclop arms. A very little intellectual force 
makes a disproportionately great impression, and 
when one observes how eagerly our people enter- 
tain and discuss a new theory, whether home-born 
or imported, and how little thought operates how 
great an effect, one would draw a favorable infer- 
ence as to their intellectual and spiritual tendencies. 
It seems as if two or three persons coming who 
should add to a high spiritual aim great construc- 
tive energy, would carry the country with them. 



THE SCHOLAR. 266 

In making this claim of costly accomplishments 
for the scholar, I chiefly wish to infer the dignity 
of his work by the lustre of his appointments. He 
is not cheaply equipped. The universe was rifled 
to furnish him. He is to forge out of coarsest ores 
the sharpest weapons. But if the weapons are val- 
ued for themselves, if his talents assume an inde- 
pendence, and come to work for ostentation, they 
cannot serve him. It was said of an eminent 
Frenchman, that " he was drowned in his talents." 
The peril of every fine faculty is the delight of play- 
ing with it for pride. Talent is commonly devel- 
oped at the expense of character, and the greater it 
grows, the more is the mischief and misleading ; so 
that presently all is wrong, talent is mistaken for 
genius, a dogma or system for truth, ambition for 
greatness, ingenuity for poetry, sensuality for art ; 
and the young, coming up with innocent hope, and 
looking around them at education, at the professions 
and employments, at religious and literary teachers 
and teaching, — finding that nothing outside corre- 
sponds to the noble order in the soul, are confused, 
and become skeptical and forlorn. Hope is taken 
from youth unless there be, by the grace of God, 
sufficient vigor in their instinct to say, " All is 
wrong and human invention. I declare anew from 
Heaven that truth exists new and beautiful and 
profitable forevermore." Order is heaven's first law. 



266 THE SCHOLAR. 

These gifts, these senses, these facilities are excel- 
lent as long as subordinated ; all wasted and mis- 
chievous when they assume to lead and not obey. 
What is the use of strength or cunning or beauty, 
or musical voice, or birth, or breeding, or money, to 
a maniac ? Yet society, in which we live, is sub- 
ject to fits of frenzy ; sometimes is for an age to- 
gether a maniac, with birth, breeding, beauty, cun- 
ning, strength and money. And there is but one 
defence against this principle of chaos, and that is 
the principle of order, or brave return at all hours 
to an infinite common-sense, to the mother-wit, to 
the wise instinct, to the pure intellect. 

When a man begins to dedicate himself to a par- 
ticular function, as his logical, or his remembering, 
or his oratorical, or his arithmetical skill ; the ad- 
vance of his character and genius pauses ; he has 
run to the end of his line ; seal the book ; the de- 
velopment of that mind is arrested. The scholar 
is lost in the showman. Society is babyish, and is 
dazzled and deceived by the weapon, without in- 
quiring into the cause for which it is drawn ; like 
boys by the drums and colors of the troops. 

The objection of men of the world to what they 
call the morbid intellectual tendency in our young 
men at present, is not a hostility to their truth, but 
to this, its shortcoming, that the idealistic views un- 
fit their children for business in their sense, and do 



THE SCHOLAR. 26T 

not qualify them for any complete life of a better 
kind. They threaten the validity of contracts, but 
do not prevail so far as to establish the new king- 
dom which shall supersede contracts, oaths, and 
property. " We have seen to weariness what you 
cannot do ; now show us what you can and will do," 
asks the practical man, and with perfect reason. 

We are not afraid of new truth, — of truth 
never, new, or old, — no, but of a counterfeit. 
Everybody hates imbecility and shortcoming, not 
new methods. The astronomer is not ridiculous 
inasmuch as he is an astronomer, but inasmuch as 
he is not an astronomer. Be that you are : be that 
cheerly and sovereignly. Plotinus makes no apol- 
ogies, he says roundly, " the knowledge of the senses 
is truly ludicrous." " Body and its properties be- 
long to the region of nonentity, as if more of body 
was necessarily produced where a defect of being 
happens in a greater degree." " Matter," says 
Plutarch, " is privation." Let the man of ideas at 
this hour be as direct, and as fully committed. 
Have you a thought in your heart ? There was 
never such need of it as now. As we read the 
newspapers, as we see the effrontery with which 
money and power carry their ends and ride over 
honesty and good-meaning, patriotism and religion 
seem to shriek like ghosts. We will not speak for 
them, because to speak for them seems so weak and 



268 THE SCHOLAR. 

hopeless. We will hold fast our opinion and die 
in silence. But a true orator will make us feel 
that the states and kingdoms, the senators, lawyers 
and rich men are caterpillars' webs and caterpillars, 
when seen in the light of this despised and imbecile 
truth. Then we feel what cowards we have been. 
Truth alone is great. The orator too becomes a 
fool and a shadow before this light which lightens 
through him. It shines backward and forward, 
diminishes and annihilates everybody, and the pro- 
phet so gladly feels his personality lost in this vic- 
torious life. The spiritual nature exhibits itself so 
in its counteraction to any accumulation of material 
force. There is no mass that can be a counter- 
weight for it. This makes one man good against 
mankind. This is the secret of eloquence, for it is 
the end of eloquence in a half -hour's discourse, — 
perhaps by a few sentences, — to persuade a multi- 
tude of persons to renounce their opinions, and 
change the course of life. They go forth not the 
men they came in, but shriven, convicted, and con- 
verted. 

We have many revivals of religion. We have 
had once what was called the Kevival of Letters. I 
wish to see a revival of the human mind : to see 
men's sense of duty extend to the cherishing and 
use of their intellectual powers : their religion 
should go with their thought and hallow it. Who- 



THE SCHOLAR. 269 

soever looks with heed into his thoughts will find 
that our science of the mind has not got far. He 
will find there is somebody within him that knows 
more than he does, a certain dumb life in life ; a 
simple wisdom behind all acquired wisdom ; some- 
what not educated or educable ; not altered or al- 
terable ; a mother-wit which does not learn by- 
experience or by books, but knew it all already ; 
makes no progress, but was wise in youth as in age. 
More or less clouded it yet resides the same in all, 
saying Ay^ ay^ or iVb, no to every proposition. Yet 
its grand Ay and its grand iVb are more musical 
than all eloquence. Nobody has found the limit 
of its knowledge. Whatever object is brought be- 
fore it is already well known to it. Its justice is 
perfect ; its look is catholic and universal, its light 
ubiquitous like the sun. It does not put forth or- 
gans, it rests in presence : yet trusted and obeyed 
in happy natures it becomes active and salient, and 
makes new means for its great ends. 

The scholar then is unfurnished who has only 
literary weapons. He ought to have as many tal- 
ents as he can ; memory, arithmetic, practical power, 
manners, temper, lion-heart, are all good things, 
and if he has none of them he can still manage, if 
he have the main-mast, — if he is anything. But 
he must have the resource of resources, and be 
planted on necessity. For the sure months are 



270 THE SCHOLAR. 

bringing him to an examination-day in which noth- 
ing is remitted or excused, and for which no tutor, 
no book, no lectures, and almost no preparation 
can be of the least avail. He will have to answer 
certain questions, which, I must plainly tell you, 
cannot be staved off. For all men, all women, 
Time, your country, your condition, the invisible 
world, are the interrogators : Who are you f What 
do you f Can you obtain what you wish f Is 
there method in your consciousness? Can you 
see tendency in your life f Can you help any 
soul f 

Can he answer these questions ? can he dispose 
of them ? Happy if you can answer them mutely 
in the order and disposition of your life I Happy 
for more than yourself, a benefactor of men, if you 
can answer them in works of wisdom, art, or poetry ; 
bestowing on the general mind of men organic cre- 
ations, to be the guidance and delight of all who 
know them. These questions speak to Genius, to 
that power which is underneath and greater than 
all talent, and which proceeds out of the constitu- 
tion of every man : to Genius, which is an emana- 
tion of that it tells of ; whose private counsels are 
not tinged with selfishness, but are laws. Men of 
talent fill the eye with their pretension. They go 
out into some camp of their own, and noisily per- 
suade society that this thing which they do is the 



THE SCHOLAR. 271 

needful cause of all men. They have talents for 
contention, and they nourish a small difference 
into a loud quarrel. But the world is wide, nobody 
will go there after to-morrow. The gun they have 
pointed can defend nothing but itself, nor itself any 
longer than the man is by. What is the use of ar- 
tificial positions? But Genius has no taste for 
weaving sand, or for any trifling, but flings itself 
on real elemental things, which are powers, self-de- 
fensive ; which first subsist, and then resist unwea= 
riably forevermore all that opposes. Genius has 
truth and clings to it, so that what it says and does 
is not in a by-road, visited only by curiosity, but on 
the great highways of nature, which were before 
the Appian Way, and which all souls must travel. 
Genius delights only in statements which are them- 
selves true, which attack and wound any who op- 
poses them, whether he who brought them here re- 
mains here or not; — which are live men, and do 
daily declare fresh war against all falsehood and 
custom, and will not let an offender go ; which so- 
ciety cannot dispose of or forget, but which abide 
there and will not down at anybody's bidding, but 
stand frowning and formidable, and will and must 
be finally obeyed and done. 

The scholar must be ready for bad weather, pov- 
erty, insult, weariness, repute of failure, and many 
vexations. He must have a great patience, and 



272 THE SCHOLAR. 

ride at anchor and vanquish every enemy whom his 
small arms cannot reach, by the grand resistance of 
submission, of ceasing to do. He is to know that 
in the last resort he is not here to work, but to be 
worked upon. He is to eat insult, drink insult, be 
clothed and shod in insult until he has learned that 
this bitter bread and shameful dress is also whole- 
some and warm, is in short indifferent ; is of the 
same chemistry as praise and fat living ; that they 
also are disgrace and soreness to him who has them. 
I think much may be said to discourage and dis- 
suade the young scholar from his career. Freely 
be that said. Dissuade all you can from the lists. 
Sift the wheat, frighten away the lighter souls. 
Let us keep only the heavy-armed. Let those 
come who cannot but come, and who see that there 
is no choice here, no advantage and no disadvan- 
tage compared with other careers. For the great 
Necessity is our patron, who distributes sun and 
shade after immutable laws. 

Yes, he has his dark days, he has weakness, he 
iias waitings, he has bad company, he is pelted by 
storms of cares, untuning cares, untuning company. 
Well, let him meet them. He has not consented to 
the frivolity, nor to the dispersion. The practical 
aim is forever higher than the literary aim. He 
shall not submit to degradation, but shall bear these 
crosses with what grace he can. He is still to dO' 



THE SCHOLAR 273 

cline how many glittering opportunities, and to re- 
treat, and wait. So shall you find in this penury 
and absence of thought a purer splendor than ever 
clothed the exhibitions of wit. I invite you not to 
cheap joys, to the flutter of gratified vanity, to a 
sleek and rosy comfort ; no, but to bareness, to 
power, to enthusiasm, to the mountain of vision, to 
true and natural supremacy, to the society of the 
great, and to love. Give me bareness and poverty 
so that I Imow them as the sure heralds of the 
Muse. Not in plenty, not in a thriving, well-to-do 
condition, she delighteth. He that would sacrifice 
at her altar must not leave a few flowers, an apple, 
or some symbolic gift. No ; he must relinquish or- 
chards and gardens, prosperity and convenience ; 
he may live on a heath without trees ; sometimes 
hungry, and sometimes rheumatic with cold. The 
fire retreats and concentrates within into a pure 
flame, pure as the stars to which it mounts. 

But, gentlemen, there is plainly no end to these 
expansions. I have exliausted your patience, and 
I have only begun. I had perhaps wiselier adhered 
to my first purpose of confining my illustration to 
a single topic, but it is so much easier to say many 
things than to explain one. Well, you will see the 
drift of all my thoughts, this namely — that the 
scholar must be much more than a scholar, that his 
ends give value to every means, but he is to subdue 

VOL. X. 18 



274 THE SCHOLAR. 

and keep down his methods ; that his use of books 
is occasional, and infinitely subordinate ; that he 
should read a little proudly, as one who knows the 
original, and cannot therefore very highly value 
the copy. In like manner he is to hold lightly 
every tradition, every opinion, every persoli, out of 
his piety to that Eternal Spirit which dwells unex- 
pressed with him. He shall think very highly of 
his destiny. He is here to know the secret of Gen- 
ius ; to become, not a reader of poetry, but Homer, 
Dante, Milton, Shakspeare, Swedenborg, in the 
fountain, through that. If one man could impart 
his faith to another, if I could prevail to commu- 
nicate the incommunicable mysteries, you should 
see the breadth of your realm ; — that ever as you 
ascend your proper and native path, you receive 
the keys of Nature and history, and rise on the same 
stairs to science and to joy. 



PLUTARCH. 



The soul 
Shall have society of its own rank : 
Be great, be true, and all the Scipios, 
The Catos, the wise patriots of Rome, 
Shall flock to you and tarry by your side 
And comfort you with their high company. 



PLUTARCH. 



It is remarkable that of an author so familiar as 
Plutarch, not only to scholars, but to all reading 
men, and whose history is so easily gathered from 
his works, no accurate memoir of his life, not even 
the dates of his birth and death, should have come 
down to us. Strange that the writer of so many 
illustrious biographies should wait so long for his 
own. It is agreed that he was born about the year 
50 of the Christian era. He has been represented 
as having been the tutor of the Emperor Trajan, 
as dedicating one of his books to him, as living 
long in Rome in great esteem, as having received 
from Trajan the consular dignity, and as having 
been appointed by him the governor of Greece. 
He was a man whose real superiority had no need 
of these flatteries. Meantime, the simple truth is, 
that he was not the tutor of Trajan, that he dedi- 
cated no book to him, was not consul in Rome, 
nor governor of Greece ; appears never to have 
been in Rome but on two occasions, and then on 

1 This paper was originally printed as an introduction to 
Plutarch's Morals, edited by Professor William W. Goodwin, 
and published, in 1871, by Messrs. Little, Brown & Co, 
through whose courtesy it is included in this edition. 



278 PLUTARCH. 

business of the people of his native city, Chaeronea ; 
and though he found or made friends at Rome, and 
read lectures to some friends or scholars, he did not 
know or learn the Latin language there ; with one 
or two doubtful exceptions, never quotes a Latin 
book ; and though the contemporary, in his youth 
or in his old age, of Persius, Juvenal, Lucan and 
Seneca, of Quintilian, Martial, Tacitus, Suetonius, 
Pliny the Elder and the Younger, he does not cite 
them, and, in return, his name is never mentioned 
by any Roman writer. It would seem that the com- 
munity of letters and of personal news was even 
more rare at that day than the want of printing, of 
railroads and telegraphs, would suggest to us. 

But this neglect by his contemporaries has been 
compensated by an immense popularity in modern 
nations. Whilst his books were never known to 
the world in their own Greek tongue, it is curious 
that the " Lives " were translated and printed in 
Latin, thence into Italian, French, and English, 
more than a century before the original " Works '' 
were yet printed. For whilst the "Lives" were 
translated in Rome in 1470, and the " Morals," 
part by part, soon after, the first printed edition 
of the Greek " Works " did not appear until 1572. 
Hardly current in his own Greek, these found 
learned interpreters in the scholars of Germany, 
Spain and Italy. In France, in the middle of the 



PLUTARCH. 279 

most turbulent civil wars, Amyot's translation awak- 
ened general attention. His genial version of tlio 
" Lives " in 1559, of the " Morals " in 1572, had 
signal success. King Henry IV. wrote to his wife, 
Marie de Medicis : " Vive Dieu. As God liveth, 
you could not have sent me anything which could 
be more agreeable than the news of the pleasure 
you have taken in this reading. Plutarch always 
delights me with a fresh novelty. To love him is 
to love me ; for he has been long time the instructor 
of my youth. My good mother, to whom I owe all, 
and who would not wish, she said, to see her son an 
illustrious dunce, put this book into my hands al- 
most when I was a child at the breast. It has been 
like my conscience, and has whispered in my ear 
many good suggestions and maxims for my conduct 
and the government of my affairs." Still earlier, 
Rabelais cites him with due respect. Montaigne, 
in 1589, says : " We dunces had been lost, had not 
this book raised us out of the dirt. By this favor 
of his we dare now speak and write. The ladies 
are able to read to schoolmasters. 'Tis our brevi- 
ary." Montesquieu drew from him his definition 
of law, and, in his Pensees^ declares, " I am always 
charmed with Plutarch ; in his writings are circum- 
stances attached to persons, which give great pleas- 
ure ; " and adds examples. Saint Evremond read 
Plutarch to the great Cond^ under a tent. Rollin, 



280 PLUTARCH. 

SO long the historian of antiquity for France, drew 
unhesitatingly his history from him. Voltaire hon- 
ored him, and Rousseau acknowledged him as his 
master. In England, Sir Thomas North translated 
the " Lives " in 1579, and Holland the " Morals " 
in 1603, in time to be used by Shakspeare in his 
plays, and read by Bacon, Dryden, and Cudworth. 

Then, recently, there has been a remarkable re- 
vival, in France, in the taste for Plutarch and his 
contemporaries ; led, we may say, by the eminent 
critic Sainte-Beuve. M. Octave Greard, in a crit- 
ical work on the " Morals," has carefully correct- 
ed the popular legends and constructed from the 
works of Plutarch himself his true biography. M. 
Leveque has given an exposition of his moral phi- 
losophy, under the title of " A Physician of the 
Soul," in the Bevue des Deux Mondes ; and M. C. 
Martha, chapters on the genius of Marcus Aurelius, 
of Persius, and Lucretius, in the same journal ; 
whilst M. Fustel de Coulanges has explored from 
its roots in the Aryan race, then in their Greek 
and Roman descendants, the primeval religion of 
the household. 

Plutarch occupies a unique place in literature as 
an encyclopaedia of Greek and Roman antiquity. 
Whatever is eminent in fact or in fiction, in opin- 
ion, in character, in institutions, in science — natu- 
ral, moral, or metaphysical, or in memorable say' 



PLUTARCH. 281 

ings, drew his attention and came to his pen with 
more or less fulness of record. He is, among prose 
writers, what Chaucer is among English poets, a rep, 
ertory for those who want the story without search 
ing for it at first hand, — a compend of all accepted 
traditions. And all this without any supreme in. 
tellectual gifts. He is not a profound mind ; not a 
master in any science ; not a lawgiver, like Lycur- 
gus or Solon ; not a metaphysician, like Parmenides, 
Plato, or Aristotle ; not the founder of any sect or 
community, like Pythagoras or Zeno ; not a natural- 
ist, like Pliny or Linnaeus ; not a leader of the mind 
of a generation, like Plato or Goethe. But if he 
had not the highest powers, he was yet a man of 
rare gifts. He had that universal sympathy with 
genius which makes all its victories his own ; though 
he never used verse, he had many qualities of the 
poet in the power of his imagination, the speed of 
his mental associations, and his sharp, objective 
eyes. But what specially marks him, he is a chief 
example of the illumination of the intellect by the 
force of morals. Though the most amiable of boon- 
companions, this generous religion gives him a^^er- 
gus like Goethe's. 

Plutarch was well-born, well-taught, well-condi- 
tioned ; a self-respecting, amiable man, who knew 
how to better a good education by travels, by de- 
votion to affairs private and public ; a master of an« 



282 PLUTARCH. 

cient culture, he read books with a just criticism; 
eminently social, he was a king in his own house, 
surrounded himself with select friends, and knew 
the high value of good conversation ; and declares in 
a letter written to his wife that " he finds scarcely 
an erasure, as in a book well-written, in the happi- 
ness of his life." 

The range of mind makes the glad writer. The 
reason of Plutarch's vast popularity is his human- 
ity. A man of society, of affairs ; upright, practi- 
cal ; a good son, husband, father, and friend, — he 
has a taste for common life, and knows the court, 
the camp and the judgment-hall, but also the forge, 
farm, kitchen and cellar, and every utensil and use, 
and with a wise man's or a poet's eye. Thought de- 
fends him from any degradation. He does not lose 
his way, for the attractions are from within, not from 
without. A poet in verse or prose must have a sen- 
suous eye, but an intellectual co-perception. Plu- 
tarch's memory is full, and his horizon wide. Noth- 
ing touches man but he feels to be his ; he is toler^ 
ant even of vice, if he finds it genial ; enough a man 
of the world to give even the Devil his due, and 
would have hugged Robert Burns, when he cried : — 

" O wad ye tak' a thought and mend! " 
He is a philosopher with philosophers, a natiiralist 
with naturalists, and sufficiently a mathematician 
to leave some of his readers, now and then, at a long 



PLUTARCH. 283 

distance behind him, or respectfully skipping to the 
next chapter. But this scholastic omniscience of 
our author engages a new respect, since they hope 
he understands his own diagram. 

He perpetually suggests Montaigne, who was the 
best reader he has ever found, though Montaigne 
excelled his master in the point and. surprise of his 
sentences. Plutarch had a religion which Mon- 
taigne wanted, and which defends him from wan- 
tonness ; and though Plutarch is as plain-spoken, 
his moral sentiment is always pure. What better 
praise has any writer received than he whom Mon- 
taigne finds " frank in giving things, not words," 
dryly adding, " it vexes me that he is so exposed to 
the spoil of those that are conversant with him." 
It is one of the felicities of literary history, the tie 
which inseparably couples these two names across 
fourteen centuries. Montaigne, whilst he grasps 
Etienne de la Boece with one hand, reaches back 
the other to Plutarch. These distant friendships 
charm us, and honor all the parties, and make the 
best example of the universal citizenship and frater- 
nity of the human mind. 

I do not know where to find a book — to borrow 
a phrase of Ben Jonson's — " so rammed with life," 
and this in chapters chiefly ethical, which are so 
prone to be heavy and sentimental. No poet could 
illustrate his thouo-ht with more novel or striking 



284 PLUTARCH. 

similes or liaj)pier anecdotes. His style is real- 
istic, picturesque and varied; his sharp objective 
eyes seeing everything that moves, shines, or threat- 
ens in nature or art, or thought or dreams. In- 
deed, twilights, shadows, omens and spectres have 
a charm for him. He believes in witchcraft and 
the evil eye, in demons and ghosts, — but prefers, 
if you please, to talk of these in the morning. His 
vivacity and abundance never leave him to loiter 
or pound on an mcident. I admire his rapid and 
crowded style, as if he had such store of anecdotes 
of his heroes that he is forced to suppress more 
than he recounts, in order to keep up with the hast- 
ing history. 

His surprising merit is the genial facility with 
which he deals with his manifold topics. There is 
no trace of labor or pain. He gossips of heroes, 
philosophers and poets ; of virtues and genius ; of 
love and fate and empires. It is for his pleasure 
that he recites aU that is best in his reading : he 
prattles history. But he is no courtier, and no 
Boswell : he is ever manly, far from fawning, and 
would be welcome to the sages and warriors he re- 
ports, as one having a native right to admire and 
recount these stirring deeds and speeches. I find 
him a better teacher of rhetoric than any modern. 
His superstitions are poetic, aspiring, affirmative. 
A poet might rhyme aU day wdth hints drawn 



PLUTARCH. 285 

from Plutarch, page on page. No doubt, this su- 
perior suggestion for the modern reader owes much 
to the foreign air, the Greek wine, the religion and 
history of antique heroes. Thebes, Sparta, Athens 
and Rome charm us away from the disgust of the 
passing hour. But his own cheerfulness and rude 
health are also magnetic. In his immense quota- 
tion and allusion we quickly cease to discriminate 
between what he quotes and what he invents. We 
sail on his memory into the ports of every nation, 
enter into every private property, and do not stop 
to discriminate owners, but give him the praise of 
all. 'T is all Plutarch, by right of eminent domain, 
and all property vests in this emperor. This facil- 
ity and abundance make the joy of his narrative, 
and he is read to the neglect of more careful histo- 
rians. Yet he inspires a curiosity, sometimes makes 
a necessity, to read them. He disowns any attempt 
to rival Thucydides ; but I suppose he has a hun- 
dred readers where Thucydides finds one, and Thu- 
cydides must often thank Plutarch for that one. 
He has preserved for us a multitude of precious 
sentences, in prose or verse, of authors whose books 
are lost ; and these embalmed fragments, through 
his loving selection alone, have come to be proverbs 
of later mankind. I hope it is only my immense 
ignorance that makes me believe that they do not 
survive out of his pages, — not only Thespis, Pole- 



286 PLUTARCH. 

mos, Euphorion, Ariston, Evenus, etc., but frag- 
ments of Menander and Pindar. At all events, it 
is in reading the fragments he has saved from lost 
authors that I have hailed another example of the 
sacred care which has unrolled in our times, and 
still searches and unrolls 'pa'pyri from ruined libra- 
ries and buried cities, and has drawn attention to 
what an ancient might call the politeness of Fate, 
— we will say, more advisedly, the benign Provi- 
dence which uses the violence of war, of earthquakes 
and changed water-courses, to save underground 
through barbarous ages the relics of ancient art, 
and thus allows us to witness the upturning of the 
alphabets of old races, and the deciphering of for- 
gotten languages, so to complete the annals of the 
forefathers of Asia, Africa and Europe. 

His delight in poetry makes him cite with joy 
the speech of Gorgias, " that the tragic poet who 
deceived was juster than he who deceived not, and 
he that was deceived was wiser than he who was 
not deceived." 

It is a consequence of this poetic trait in his 
mind, that I confess that, in reading him, I em- 
brace the particulars, and carry a faint memory of 
the argument or general design of the chapter ; but 
he is not less welcome, and he leaves the reader 
with a relish and a necessity for completing his 
studies. Many examples might be cited of ner- 



PLUTARCH. 287 

vous expression and happy allusion, that indicate a 
poet and an orator, though he is not ambitious of 
these titles, and cleaves to the security of prose nar- 
rative, and only shows his intellectual sjrmpathy 
with these ; yet I cannot forbear to cite one or two 
sentences which none who reads them will forget. 
In treating of the style of the Pythian Oracle, he 
says : — 

" Do you not observe, some one will say, what 
a grace there is in Sappho's measures, and how 
they delight and tickle the ears and fancies of the 
hearers? Whereas the Sibyl, with her frantic 
grimaces, uttering sentences altogether thoughtful 
and serious, neither fucused nor perfumed, contin- 
ues her voice a thousand years through the favor of 
the Divinity that speaks within her." 

Another gives an insight into his mystic tenden- 
cies : — 

" Early this morning, asking Epaminondas about 
the manner of Lysis's burial, I found that Lysis 
had taught him as far as the incommunicable mys- 
teries of our sect, and that the same Daemon that 
waited on Lysis, presided over him, if I can guess 
at the pilot from the sailing of the ship. The paths 
of life are large, but in few are men directed by the 
Daemons. When Theanor had said this, he looked 
attentively on Epaminondas, as if he designed a 
fresh search into his nature and inclinations." 



288 PLUTARCH. 

And here is his sentiment on superstition, some- 
what condensed in Lord Bacon's citation of it : "I 
had rather a great deal that men should say, There 
was no such man at all as Plutarch, than that they 
should say that there was one Plutarch that would 
eat up his children as soon as they were born, as 
the poets speak of Saturn." 

The chapter " On Fortune " should be read by 
poets, and other wise men; and the vigor of his 
pen appears in the chapter " Whether the Atheni- 
ans were more Warlike or Learned," and in his 
attack upon Usurers. 

There is, of course, a wide difference of time 
in the writing of these discourses, and so in their 
merit. Many of them are mere sketches or notes 
for chapters in preparation, which were never di- 
gested or finished. Many are notes for disputa- 
tions in the lecture-room. His poor indignation 
against Herodotus was perhaps a youthful prize 
essay : it appeared to me captious and labored ; or 
perhaps, at a rhetorician's school, the subject of 
Herodotus being the lesson of the day, Plutarch 
was appointed by lot to take the adverse side. 

The plain-speaking of Plutarch, as of the ancient 
writers generally, coming from the habit of writing 
for one sex only, has a great gain for brevity, and, 
in our new tendencies of civilization, may tend to 
correct a false delicacy. 



PLUTARCH. 289 

We are always interested in the man who treats 
the intellect well. We expect it from the philoso- 
pher, — from Plato, Aristotle, Spinoza and Kant ; 
but we know that metaphysical studies in any but 
minds of large horizon and incessant inspiration 
have their dangers. One asks sometimes whether 
a metaphysician can treat the intellect well. The 
central fact is the superhuman intelligence, pour- 
ing into us from its unknown fountain, to be re- 
ceived with religious awe, and defended from any 
mixture of our will. But this high Muse comes 
and goes ; and the danger is that, when the Muse 
is wanting, the student is prone to supply its place 
with microscopic subtleties and logomachy. It is 
fatal to spiritual health to lose your admiration. 
" Let others wrangle," said St. Augustine ; " I 
will wonder." Plato and Plotinus are enthusiasts, 
who honor the race ; but the logic of the sophists 
and materialists, whether Greek or French, fills us 
with disgust. Whilst we expect this awe and rev- 
erence of the spiritual power from the philosopher 
in his closet, we praise it in the man of the world ; 
«— the man who lives on quiet terms with existing 
institutions, yet indicates his perception of these 
high oracles ; as do Plutarch, Montaigne, Hume 
and Goethe. These men lift themselves at once 
from the vulgar and are not the parasites of wealth. 
Perhaps they sometimes compromise, go out to dine, 

VOL. X. 19 



290 PLUTARCH. 

make and take compliments ; but they keep open 
the source of wisdom and health. Plutarch is uni- 
formly true to this centre. He had not lost his 
wonder. He is a pronounced idealist, who does not 
hesitate to say, like another Berkeley, " Matter is 
itself privation ; " and again, " The Sun is the cause 
that all men are ignorant of Apollo, by sense with- 
drawing the rational intellect from that which is to 
that which appears." He thinks that " souls are 
naturally endowed with the faculty of prediction ; " 
he delights in memory, with its miraculous power 
of resisting time. He thinks that " Alexander in- 
vaded Persia with greater assistance from Aris- 
totle than from his father Philip." He thinks that 
" he who has ideas of his own is a bad judge of 
another man's, it being true that the Eleans would 
be the most proper judges of the Olympic games, 
were no Eleans gamesters." He says of Socrates, 
that he endeavored to bring reason and things to- 
gether, and make truth consist with sober sense. 
He wonders with Plato at that nail of pain and 
pleasure which fastens the body to the mind. The 
mathematics give him unspeakable pleasure, but he 
chiefly liked that proportion which teaches us to 
account that which is just, equal; and not that 
which is equal, just. 

Of philosophy he is more interested in the results 
than in the method. He has a just instinct of the 



PLUTARCH. 291 

presence of a master, and prefers to sit as a scholar 
with Plato, than as a disputant ; and, true to his 
practical character, he wishes the philosopher not 
to hide in a corner, but to commend himself to men 
of public regards and ruling genius : " for, if he 
once possess such a man with principles of honor 
and religion, he takes a compendious method, by 
doing good to one, to oblige a great part of man- 
kind." 'T is a temperance, not an eclecticism, which 
makes him adverse to the severe Stoic, or the Gym- 
nosophist, or Diogenes, or any other extremist. 
That vice of theirs shall not hinder him from citing 
any good word they chance to drop. He is an 
eclectic in such sense as Montaigne was, — willing 
to be an expectant, not a dogmatist. 

In many of these chapters it is easy to infer the 
relation between the Greek philosophers and those 
who came to them for instruction. This teaching was 
no play nor routine, but strict, sincere and affection- 
ate. The part of each of the class is as important as 
that of the master. They are like the base-ball play- 
ers, to whom the pitcher, the bat, the catcher and the 
scout are equally important. And Plutarch thought, 
with Ariston, " that neither a bath nor a lecture 
served any purpose, unless they were purgative." 
Plutarch has such a keen pleasure in realities that 
he has none in verbal disputes ; he is impatient of 
sophistry, and despises the Epicharmian disputa- 



292 PLUTARCH. 

tions : as, that he who ran in debt yesterday owes 
nothing to-day, as being another man ; so, he that 
was yesterday invited to supper, the next night 
comes an unbidden guest, for that he is quite an- 
other person. 

Except as historical curiosities, little can be said 
in behalf of the scientific value of the " Opinions of 
the Philosophers," the " Questions " and the " Sym- 
posiacs." They are, for the most part, very crude 
opinions ; many of them so puerile that one would 
believe that Plutarch in his haste adopted the notes 
of his younger auditors, some of them jocosely mis- 
reporting the dogma of the professor, who laid 
them aside as memoranda for future revision, which 
he never gave, and they were posthumously pub- 
lished. Now and then there are hints of superior 
science. You may cuU from this record of barbarous 
guesses of shepherds and travellers, statements that 
are predictions of facts established in modern sci- 
ence. Usually, when Thales, Anaximenes or An- 
aximander are quoted, it is really a good judgment. 
The explanation of the rainbow, of the floods of the 
Nile, and of the remora^ etc., are just ; and the bad 
guesses are not worse than many of Lord Bacon's. 

His Natural History is that of a lover and poet, 
and not of a physicist. His humanity stooped af- 
fectionately to trace the virtues which he loved in 
the animals also. " Knowing and not knowing ia 



PLUTARCH, 293 

the affirmative or negative of the dog; knowing 
you is to be your friend ; not knowing you, your 
enemy." He quotes Thucydides' saying that " not 
the desire of honor only never grows old, but much 
less also the inclination to society and affection to 
the State, which continue even in ants and bees to 
the very last." 

But, though curious in the questions of the 
schools on the nature and genesis of things, his ex- 
treme interest in every trait of character, and his 
broad humanity, lead him constantly to Morals, to 
the study of the Beautiful and Good. Hence his 
love of heroes, his rule of life, and his clear convic- 
tions of the high destiny of the soul. La Harpe 
said that " Plutarch is the genius the most natu- 
rally moral that ever existed." 

'T is almost inevitable to compare Plutarch with 
Seneca, who, born fifty years earlier, was for many 
years his contemporary, though they never met, and 
their writings were perhaps unknown to each other. 
Plutarch is genial, with an endless interest in all 
human and divine things ; Seneca, a professional 
philosopher, a writer of sentences, and, though he 
keep a sublime path, is less interesting, because 
less humane ; and when we have shut his book, we 
forget to open it again. There is a certain violence 
in his opinions, and want of sweetness. He lacks 
the sympathy of Plutarch. He is tiresome through 



294 PLUTARCH. 

perpetual didactics. He is not happily living. 
Cannot the simple lover of truth enjoy the virtues 
of those he meets, and the virtues suggested by 
them, so to find himself at some time purely con- 
tented ? Seneca was still more a man of the world 
than Plutarch ; and, by his conversation with the 
Court of Nero, and his own skill, like Voltaire's, of 
living with men of business and emulating their 
address in affairs by great accumulation of his own 
property, learned to temper his philosophy with 
facts. He ventured far, — apparently too far, — 
for so keen a conscience as he inly had. Yet we 
owe to that wonderful moralist illustrious maxims ; 
as if the scarlet vices of the times of Nero had the 
natural effect of driving virtue to its loftiest an- 
tagonisms. "Seneca," says L'Estrange, "was a 
pagan Christian, and is very good reading for our 
Christian pagans." He was Buddhist in his cold 
abstract virtue, with a certain impassibility beyond 
humanity. He called pity, " that fault of narrow 
souls." Yet what noble words we owe to him : 
" God divided man into men, that they might help 
each other ; " and again, " The good man differs 
from God in nothing but duration." His thoughts 
are excellent, if only he had the right to say them. 
Plutarch, meantime, with every virtue under 
heaven, thought it the top of wisdom to philoso- 
phize yet not appear to do it, and to reach in mirth 



PLUTARCH. 295 

the same ends wliich the most serious are propos- 
ing. 

Plutarch thought " truth to be the greatest good 
that man can receive, and the goodliest blessing 
that God can give." " When you are persuaded 
in your mind that you cannot either offer or per- 
form anything more agreeable to the gods than the 
entertaining a right notion of them, you will then 
avoid superstition as a no less evil than atheism." 
He cites Euripides to affirm, " If gods do aught 
dishonest, they are no gods," and the memorable 
words of Antigone, in Sophocles, concerning the 
moral sentiment ; — 

" For neither now nor yesterday began 
These thoughts, which have been ever, nor yet can 
A man be found who their first entrance knew." 

His faith in the immortality of the soul is an- 
other measure of his deep humanity. He reminds 
his friends that the Delphic oracles have given sev' 
eral answers the same in substance as that formerly 
given to Corax the Naxian : — 

" It sounds profane impiety 
To teach that human souls e'er die." 

He believes that the doctrine of the Divine Provi- 
dence, and that of the immortality of the soul, rest 
on one and the same basis. He thinks it impossi- 
ble either that a man beloved of the gods should 



296 PLUTARCH. 

not be happy, or that a wise and just man should 
not be beloved of the gods. To him the Epicu- 
reans are hateful, who held that the soul perishes 
when it is separated from the body. " The soul, 
incapable of death, suffers in the same manner in 
the body, as birds that are kept in a cage." He 
believes "that the souls of infants pass immedi- 
ately into a better and more divine state." 

I can easily believe that an anxious soul may 
find in Plutarch's chapter called " Pleasure not at- 
tainable by Epicurus," and his "Letter to his Wife 
Timoxena," a more sweet and reassuring argument 
on the immortality than in the Phaedo of Plato ; 
for Plutarch always addresses the question on the 
human side, and not on the metaphysical; as Wal- 
ter Scott took hold of boys and young men, in Eng- 
land and America, and through them of their fa- 
thers. His grand perceptions of duty lead him to 
his stern delight in heroism ; a stoic resistance to 
low indulgence ; to a fight with fortune ; a regard 
for truth; his love of Sparta, and of heroes like 
Aristides, Phocion and Cato. He insists that the 
highest good is in action. He thinks that the in- 
habitants of Asia came to be vassals to one, only 
for not having been able to pronounce one syllable ; 
which is, No. So keen is his sense of allegiance 
to right reason, that he makes a fight against For- 
tune whenever she is named. At Eome he thinks 



PLUTARCH. 297 

her wings were clipped : she stood no longer on a 
ball, but on a cube as large as Italy. He thinks 
it was by superior virtue that Alexander won his 
battles in Asia and Africa, and the Greeks theirs 
against Persia. 

But this Stoic in his fight with Fortune, with 
vices, effeminacy and indolence, is gentle as a 
woman when other strings are touched. He is the 
most amiable of men. " To erect a trophy in the 
soul against anger is that which none but a great 
and victorious puissance is able to achieve." — 
" Anger turns the mind out of doors, and bolts 
the door." He has a tenderness almost to tears 
when he writes on "Friendship," on the "Train- 
ing of Children," and on the " Love of Brothers." 
" There is no treasure," he says, " parents can give 
to their children, like a brother; 'tis a friend given 
by nature, a gift nothing can supply ; once lost, not 
to be replaced. The Arcadian prophet, of whom 
Herodotus speaks, was obliged to make a wooden 
foot in place of that which had been chopped off. 
A brother, embroiled with his brother, going to 
seek in the street a stranger who can take his place, 
resembles him who will cut off his foot to give him- 
self one of wood." 

All his judgments are noble. He thought, with 
Epicurus, that it is more delightful to do than to 
receive a kindness. " This courteous, gentle, and 



298 PLUTARCH. 

benign disposition and behavior is not so accept- 
able, so obliging or delightful to any of those with 
whom we converse, as it is to those who have it." 
There is really no limit to his bounty : " It would 
be generous to lend our eyes and ears, nay, if pos- 
sible, our reason and fortitude to others, whilst we 
are idle or asleep." His excessive and fanciful 
humanity reminds one of Charles Lamb, whilst it 
much exceeds him. When the guests are gone, he 
" would leave one lamp burning, only as a sign of 
the respect he bore to fires, for nothing so resem- 
bles an animal as fire. It is moved and nourished 
by itself, and by its brightness, like the soul, dis- 
covers and makes everything apparent, and in its 
quenching shows some power that seems to proceed 
from a vital principle, for it makes a noise and re- 
sists, like an animal dying, or violently slaugh- 
tered ; " and he praises the Eomans, who, when the 
feast was over, " dealt well with the lamps, and did 
not take away the nourishment they had given, but 
permitted them to live and shine by it." 

I can almost regret that the learned editor of the 
present republication has not preserved, if only as 
a piece of history, the preface of Mr. Morgan, the 
editor and in part writer of this Translation of 
1718. In his dedication of the work to the Arch- 
bishop of Canterbury, Wm, Wake, he tells the 
Primate that " Plutarch was the wisest man of his 



PLUTARCH. 299 

age, and, if he had been a Christian, one of the 
best too; hut it was his severe fate to flourish in 
those days of ignorance^ which^ 't is a favorable 
opinion to hope that the Almighty will sometime 
wink at ; that our souls may be with these philos- 
ophers together in the same state of bliss.^^ The 
puzzle in the worthy translator's mind between his 
theology and his reason well reappears in the puz- 
zle of his sentence. 

I know that the chapter of " Apothegms of Noble 
Commanders " is rejected by some critics as not a 
genuine work of Plutarch ; but the matter is good, 
and is so agreeable to his taste and genius, that if 
he had found it, he would have adopted it. If he 
did not compile the piece, many, perhaps most of 
the anecdotes were already scattered in his works. 
If I do not lament that a work not his should be 
ascribed to him, I regret that he should have suf- 
fered such destruction of his own. What a trilogy 
is lost to mankind in his Lives of Scipio, Ej)ami- 
nondas, and Pindar ! 

His delight in magnanimity and self-sacrifice 
has made his books, like Homer's Iliad, a bible for 
heroes ; and wherever the Cid is relished, the leg- 
ends of Arthur, Saxon Alfred and Richard the 
Lion-hearted, Robert Bruce, Sydney, Lord Herbert 
of Cherbury, Cromwell, Nelson, Bonaparte, and 
Walter Scott's Chronicles in prose or verse, — 



300 PLUTARCH. 

there will Plutarch, who told the story of Leonidas, 
of Agesilaus, of Aristides, Phocion, Themistocles, 
Demosthenes, Epaminondas, Caesar, Cato and the 
rest, sit as the bestower of the crown of noble 
knighthood, and laureate of the ancient world. 

The chapters " On the Fortune of Alexander," 
in the '* Morals," are an important appendix to the 
portrait in the " Lives." The union in Alexander 
of sublime courage with the refinement of his pure 
tastes, making him the carrier of civilization into 
the East, are in the spirit of the ideal hero, and 
endeared him to Plutarch. That prince kept 
Homer's poems not only for himself under his pil- 
low in his tent, but carried these for the delight of 
the Persian youth, and made them acquainted also 
with the tragedies of Euripides and Sophocles. 
He persuaded the Sogdians not to kill, but to cher- 
ish their aged parents ; the Persians to reverence, 
not marry their mothers; the Scythians to bury 
and not eat their dead parents. What a fruit and 
fitting monument of his best days was his city 
Alexandria, to be the birthplace or home of Plo- 
tinus, St. Augustine, Synesius, Posidonius, Ammo- 
nius, Jamblichus, Porphyry, Origen, Aratus, Apol- 
lonius and Apuleius. 

If Plutarch delighted in heroes, and held the 
balance between the severe Stoic and the indulgent 
Epicurean, his humanity shines not less in his in- 



PLUTARCH. 301 

tercourse with his personal friends. He was a 
genial host and guest, and delighted in bringing 
chosen companions to the supper-table. He knew 
the laws of conversation and the laws of good-fel- 
lowship quite as well as Horace, and has set them 
down with such candor and grace as to make them 
good reading to-day. The guests not invited to a 
private board by the entertainer, but introduced by 
a guest as his companions, the Greek called shad- 
ows ; and the question is debated whether it was 
civil to bring them, and he treats it candidly, but 
concludes : " Therefore, when I make an invitation, 
since it is hard to break the custom of the place, 
I give my guests leave to bring shadows ; but when 
I myself am invited as a shadow, I assure you I re- 
fuse to go." He has an objection to the introduc- 
tion of music at feasts. He thought it wonderful 
that a man having a muse in his own breast, and 
all the pleasantness that would fit an entertain- 
ment, would have pipes and harps play, and by 
that external noise destroy all the sweetness that 
was proper and his ownn. 

I cannot close these notes without expressing my 
sense of the valuable service which the Editor has 
rendered to his Author and to his readers. Pro- 
fessor Goodwin is a silent benefactor to the book, 
wherever I have compared the editions. I did not 
know how careless and vicious in parts the old 



302 PLUTARCH. 

book was, until, in recent reading of the old text, 
on coming on anything absurd or unintelligible, 1 
referred to the new text and found a clear and ac. 
curate statement in its place. It is the vindication 
of Plutarch. The correction is not only of names 
of authors and of places grossly altered or mis- 
spelled, but of unpardonable liberties taken by the 
translators, whether from negligence or freak. 

One proof of Plutarch's skill as a writer is that 
he bears translation so well. In spite of its care- 
lessness and manifold faults, which, I doubt not, 
have tried the patience of its present learned editor 
and corrector, I yet confess my enjoyment of this 
old version, for its vigorous English style. The 
work of some forty or fifty University men, some of 
them imperfect in their Greek, it is a monument of 
the English language at a period of singular vigor 
and freedom of style. I hope the Commission of 
the Philological Society in London, charged with 
the duty of preparing a Critical Dictionary, will 
not overlook these volumes, which show the wealth 
of their tongue to greater advantage than many 
books of more renown as models. It runs through 
the whole scale of conversation in the street, the 
market, the coffee-house, the law courts, the palace, 
the coUege and the church. There are, no doubt, 
many vulgar phrases, and many blunders of the 
printer ; but it is the speech of business and con- 



PLUTARCH, 303 

versation, and in every tone, from lowest to high- 
est. 

We owe to these translators many sharp percep- 
tions of the wit and humor of their author, some- 
times even to the adding of the point. I notice 
one, which, although the translator has justified 
his rendering in a note, the severer criticism of the 
Editor has not retained. " Were there not a sun, 
we might, for all the other stars, pass our days in 
the Reverend Dark, as Heraclitus calls it." I find 
a humor in the phrase which might well excuse its 
doubtful accuracy. 

It is a service to our Republic to publish a book 
that can force ambitious young men, before they 
mount the platform of the county conventions, to 
read the " Laconic Apothegms " and the " Apo- 
thegms of Great Commanders." If we could keep 
the secret, and communicate it only to a few chosen 
aspirants, we might confide that, by this noble in- 
filtration, they would easily carry the victory over 
all competitors. But, as it was the desire of these 
old patriots to fill with their majestic spirit all 
Sparta or Rome, and not a few leaders only, we 
hasten to offer them to the American people. 

Plutarch's popularity will return in rapid cycles. 
If over-read in this decade, so that his anecdotes 
and opinions become commonplace, and to-day's 



304 PLUTARCH. 

novelties are sought for variety, his sterling values 
will presently recall the eye and thought of the best 
minds, and his books will be reprinted and read 
anew by coming generations. And thus Plutarch 
will be perpetually rediscovered from time to time 
as long as books last. 



fflSTORIC NOTES OF LIFE AND LETTERS 
IN NEW ENGLAND. 



Of old things all are over old, 

Of good things none are good enough ; — 
We '11 show that we can help to frame 

A world of other stuff." 



For Joy and Beauty planted it 
With faerie gardens cheered, 

And boding Fancy haunted it 
With men and women weirdo 



HISTOKIC NOTES OF LIFE AND LET- 
TERS IN NEW ENGLAND. 



The ancient manners were giving way. There 
grew a certain tenderness on the people, not before 
remarked. Children had been repressed and kept 
in the background ; now they were considered, cos- 
seted and pampered. I recall the remark of a witty 
physician who remembered the hardships of his own 
youth ; he said, " It was a misfortune to have been 
born when children were nothing, and to live till 
men were nothing." 

There are always two parties, the party of the 
Past and the party of the Future ; the Establish- 
ment and the Movement. At times the resistance 
is reanimated, the schism runs under the world and 
appears in Literature, Philosophy, Church, State, 
and social customs. It is not easy to date these 
eras of activity with any precision, but in this re- 
gion one made itself remarked, say in 1820 and the 
twenty years following. 

It seemed a war between intellect and affection ; 
a crack in nature, which split every church in Chris- 



308 HISTORIC NOTES OF 

tendom into Papal and Protestant ; Calvinism into 
Old and New schools; Quakerism into Old and 
New ; brought new divisions in politics ; as the new 
conscience touching temperance and slavery. The 
key to the period appeared to be that the mind had 
become aware of itself. Men grew reflective and 
intellectual. There was a new consciousness. The 
former generations acted under the belief that a 
shining social prosperity was the beatitude of man, 
and sacrificed uniformly the citizen to the State. 
The modern mind believed that the nation existed 
for the individual, for the guardianship and educa- 
tion of every man. This idea, roughly written in 
revolutions and national movements, in the mind of 
the philosopher had far more precision ; the individ- 
ual is the world. 

This perception is a sword such as was never 
drawn before. It divides and detaches bone and 
marrow, soul and body, yea, almost the man from 
himself. It is the age of severance, of dissociation, 
of freedom, of analysis, of detachment. Every man 
for himself. The public speaker disclaims speak- 
ing for any other ; he answers only for himself. 
The social sentiments are weak ; the sentiment of 
patriotism is weak ; veneration is low ; the natural 
affections feebler than they were. People grow 
philosophical about native land and parents and 
relations. There is an universal resistance to ties 



LIFE AND LETTERS IN NEW ENGLAND. 309 

and ligaments once supposed essential to civil soci- 
ety. The new race is stiff, heady and rebellious ; 
they are fanatics in freedom ; they hate tolls, taxes, 
turnpikes, banks, hierarchies, governors, yea, almost 
laws. They have a neck of unspeakable tenderness ; 
it winces at a hair. They rebel against theological 
as against political dogmas ; against mediation, or 
saints, or any nobility in the unseen. 

The age tends to solitude. The association of the 
time is accidental and momentary and hypocritical, 
the detachment intrinsic and progressive. The as- 
sociation is for power, merely, — for means ; the end 
being the enlargement and independency of the in- 
dividual. Anciently, society was in the course of 
things. There was a Sacred Band, a Theban Pha- 
lanx. There can be none now. College classes, 
military corps, or trades-unions may fancy them- 
selves indissoluble for a moment, over their wine ; 
but it is a painted hoop, and has no girth. The age 
of arithmetic and of criticism has set in. The struc- 
tures of old faith in every department of society a 
few centuries have sufficed to destroy. Astrology, 
magic, palmistry, are long gone. The very last 
ghost is laid. Demonology is on its last legs. Pre- 
rogative, government, goes to pieces day by day. 
Europe is strewn with wrecks ; a constitution once 
a week. In social manners and morals the revolu- 
tion is just as evident. In the law courts, crimes 



810 HISTORIC NOTES OF 

of fraud have taken the place of crimes of force. 
The stockholder has stepped into the place of the 
warlike baron. The nobles shall not any longer, 
as feudal lords, have power of life and death over 
the churls, but now, in another shape, as capitalists, 
shall in all love and peace eat them up as before. 
Nay, government itself becomes the resort of those 
whom government was invented to restrain. " Are 
there any brigands on the road ? " inquired the trav- 
eller in France. " Oh, no, set your heart at rest on 
that point," said the landlord; "what should these 
fellows keep the highway for, when they can rob 
just as effectually, and much more at their ease, in 
the bureaus of office ? " 

In literature the effect appeared in the decided 
tendency of criticism. The most remarkable lit- 
erary work of the age has for its hero and subject 
precisely this introversion: I mean the poem of 
Faust. In philosophy, Immanuel Kant has made 
the best catalogue of the human faculties and the 
best analysis of the mind. Hegel also, especially. 
In science the French savant^ exact, pitiless, with 
barometer, crucible, chemic test and calculus in 
hand, travels into all nooks and islands, to weigh, 
to analyze and report. And chemistry, which is 
the analysis of matter, has taught us that we eat 
gas, drink gas, tread on gas, and are gas. The 
same decomposition has changed the whole face of 



LIFE AND LETTERS IN NEW ENGLAND. 811 

physics; the like in all arts, modes. Authority 
falls, in Church, College, Courts of Law, Faculties, 
Medicine. Experiment is credible; antiquity is 
grown ridiculous. 

It marked itself by a certain predominance of 
the intellect in the balance of powers. The warm 
swart Earth-spirit which made the strength of 
past ages, mightier than it knew, with instincts in- 
stead of science, like a mother yielding food from 
her own breast instead of preparing it through 
chemic and culinary skill, — warm negro ages of 
sentiment and vegetation, — all gone ; another hour 
had struck and other forms arose. Instead of the 
social existence which all shared, was now separar 
tion. Every one for himself ; driven to find all his 
resources, hopes, rewards, society and deity within 
himself. 

The young men were born with knives in their 
brain, a tendency to introversion, seK-dissection, 
anatomizing of motives. The popular religion of 
our fathers had received many severe shocks from 
the new times ; from the Arminians, which was the 
current name of the backsliders from Calvinism, 
sixty years ago ; then from the English philosophic 
theologians. Hartley and Priestley and Belsham, 
the followers of Locke ; and then I should say 
much later from the slow but extraordinary influence 
of Swedenborg ; a man of prodigious mind, though 



312 HISTORIC NOTES OF 

as I think tainted with a certain suspicion of insan- 
ity, and therefore generally disowned, but exerting 
a singular power over an important intellectual 
class ; then the powerful influence of the genius and 
character of Dr. Channing. 

Germany had created criticism in vain for us un- 
til 1820, when Edward Everett returned from his 
five years in Europe, and brought to Cambridge 
his rich results, which no one was so fitted by nat- 
ural grace and the splendor of his rhetoric to intro- 
duce and recommend. He made us for the first 
time acquainted with Wolff's theory of the Homeric 
writings, with the criticism of Heyne. The nov- 
elty of the learning lost nothing in the skill and 
genius of his relation, and the rudest undergraduate 
found a new morning opened to him in the lecture- 
room of Harvard Hall. 

There was an influence on the young people from 
the genius of Everett which was almost comparable 
to that of Pericles in Athens. He had an inspira- 
tion which did not go beyond his head, but which 
made him the master of elegance. If any of my 
readers were at that period in Boston or Cambridge, 
they will easily remember his radiant beauty of 
person, of a classic style, his heavy large eye, mar- 
ble lids, which gave the impression of mass which 
the slightness of his form needed ; sculptured lips ; 
a voice of such rich tones, such precise and perfect 



LIFE AND LETTERS IN NEW ENGLAND. 313 

utterance, that, although slightly nasal, it was the 
most mellow and beautiful and correct of all the 
instruments of the time. The word that he spoke, 
in the manner in which he spoke it, became current 
and classical in New England. He had a great 
talent for collecting facts, and for bringing those 
he had to bear with ingenious felicity on the topic 
of the moment. Let him rise to speak on what oc- 
casion soever, a fact had always just transpired 
which composed, with some other fact well known 
to the audience, the most pregnant and happy coin- 
cidence. It was remarked that for a man who 
threw out so many facts he was seldom convicted 
of a blunder. He had a good deal of special learn- 
ing, and all his learning was available for purposes 
of the hour. It was all new learning, that wonder- 
fully took and stimulated the young men. It was 
so coldly and weightily communicated from so com- 
manding a platform, as if in the consciousness and 
consideration of all history and all learning, — 
adorned with so many simple and austere beauties 
of expression, and enriched with so many excellent 
digressions and significant quotations, that, though 
nothing could be conceived beforehand less attrac- 
tive or indeed less fit for green boys from Connec- 
ticut, New Hampshire and Massachusetts, with 
their unripe Latin and Greek reading, than exeget- 
ical discourses in the style of Voss and Wolff and 



314 HISTORIC NOTES OF 

Ruhnken, on the Orphic and Ante-Homeric re- 
mains, — yet this learning instantly took the high- 
est place to our imagination in our imoccupied 
American Parnassus. All his auditors felt the ex- 
treme beauty and dignity of the manner, and even 
the coarsest were contented to go punctually to lis- 
ten, for the manner, when they had found out that 
the subject-matter was not for them. In the lec- 
ture-room, he abstained from all ornament, and 
pleased himself with the play of detailing erudition 
in a style of perfect simplicity. In the pulpit (for 
he was then a clergyman) he made amends to him- 
self and his auditor for the self-denial of the pro- 
fessor's chair, and, with an infantine simplicity still, 
of manner, he gave the reins to his florid, quaint 
and affluent fancy. 

Then was exhibited aU the richness of a rhetoric 
which we have never seen rivalled in this country. 
Wonderful how memorable were words made which 
were only pleasing pictures, and covered no new or 
valid thoughts. He abounded in sentences, in wit, 
in satire, in splendid allusion, in quotation impossi- 
ble to forget, in daring imagery, in parable and 
even in a sort of defying experiment of his own 
wit and skiU in giving an oracular weight to He- 
brew or Rabbinical words ; — feats which no man 
could better accomplish, such was his self-command 
and the security of his manner. All his speech 



LIFE AND LETTERS IN NEW ENGLAND. 315 

was music, and with such variety and invention 
that the ear was never tired. Especially beautiful 
were his poetic quotations. He delighted in quot- 
ing Milton, and with such sweet modulation that 
he seemed to give as much beauty as he borrowed ; 
and whatever he has quoted will be remembered by 
any who heard him, with inseparable association 
with his voice and genius. He had nothing in com- 
mon with vulgarity and infirmity, but, speaking, 
walking, sitting, was as much aloof and uncommon 
as a star. The smallest anecdote of his behavior 
or conversation was eagerly caught and repeated, 
and every young scholar could recite brilliant sen- 
tences from his sermons, with mimicry, good or bad, 
of his voice. This influence went much farther, 
for he who was heard with such throbbing hearts 
and sparkling eyes in the lighted and crowded 
churches, did not let go his hearers when the church 
was dismissed, but the bright image of that elo- 
quent form followed the boy home to his bed-cham- 
ber ; and not a sentence was written in academic 
exercises, not a declamation attempted in the col- 
lege chapel, but showed the omnipresence of his 
genius to youthful heads. This made every youth 
his defender, and boys filled their mouths with ar- 
guments to prove that the orator had a heart. This 
was a triumph of Rhetoric. It was not the intel- 
lectual or the moral principles which he had to 



316 HISTORIC NOTES OF 

teach. It was not thoughts. When Massachusetts 
was full of his fame it was not contended that he 
had thrown any truths into circulation. But his 
power lay in the magic of form; it was in the 
graces of manner ; in a new perception of Grecian 
beauty, to which he had opened our eyes. There 
was that finish about this person which is about 
women, and which distinguishes every piece of gen- 
ius from the works of talent, — that these last are 
more or less matured in every degree of complete- 
ness according to the time bestowed on them, but 
works of genius in their first and slightest form are 
still wholes. In every public discourse there was 
nothing left for the indulgence of his hearer, no 
marks of late hours and anxious, unfinished study, 
but the goddess of grace had breathed on the work 
a last fragrancy and glitter. 

By a series of lectures largely and fashionably 
attended for two winters in Boston he made a be- 
ginning of popular literary and miscellaneous lec- 
turing, which in that region at least had important 
results. It is acquiring greater importance every 
day, and becoming a national institution. I am 
quite certain that this purely literary influence was 
of the first importance to the American mind. 

In the pulpit Dr. Frothingham, an excellent 
classical and German scholar, had already made us 
acquainted, if prudently, with the genius of Eicb 



LIFE AND LETTERS IN NEW ENGLAND. 317 

horn's theologic criticism. And Professor Norton 
a little later gave form and method to the like 
studies in the then infant Divinity School. But I 
think the paramount source of the religious revolu- 
tion was Modern Science ; beginning with Coperni- 
cus, who destroyed the pagan fictions of the 
Church, by showing mankind that the earth on 
which we live was not the centre of the Universe, 
around which the sun and stars revolved every day, 
and thus fitted to be the platform on which the 
Drama of the Divine Judgment was played before 
the assembled Angels of Heaven, — " the scaffold 
of the divine vengeance " Saurin called it, — but 
a little scrap of a planet, rushing round the sun in 
our system, which in turn was too minute to be 
seen at the distance of many stars which we be- 
hold. Astronomy taught us our insignificance in 
Nature; showed that our sacred as our profane 
history had been written in gross ignorance of the 
laws, which were far grander than we knew ; and 
compelled a certain extension and uplifting of our 
views of the Deity and his Providence. This cor- 
rection of our superstitions was confirmed by the 
new science of Geology, and the whole train of dis- 
coveries in every department. But we presently 
saw also that the religious nature in man was not 
affected by these errors in his understanding. The 
religious sentiment made nothing of bulk or size, 



318 HISTORIC NOTES OF 

or far or near ; triumphed over time as well as 
space ; and every lesson of humility, or justice, or 
charity, which the old ignorant saints had taught 
him, was still forever true. 

Whether from these influences, or whether by a 
reaction of the general mind against the too formal 
science, religion and social life of the earlier period, 
— there was, in the first quarter of our nineteenth 
century, a certain sharpness of criticism, an eager- 
ness for reform, which showed itself in every quar- 
ter. It appeared in the popularity of Lavater's 
Physiognomy, now almost forgotten. Gall and 
Spurzheim's Phrenology laid a rough hand on the 
mysteries of animal and spiritual nature, dragging 
down every sacred secret to a street show. The 
attempt was coarse and odious to scientific men, 
but had a certain truth in it ; it felt connection 
where the professors denied it, and was a leading 
to a truth which had not yet been announced. On 
the heels of this intruder came Mesmerism, which 
broke into the inmost shrines, attempted the expla- 
nation of miracle and prophecy, as well as of crea- 
tion. What could be more revolting to the contem- 
plative philosopher ! But a certain success at- 
tended it, against all expectation. It was human, 
it was genial, it affirmed unity and connection be- 
tween remote poin^ts, and as such was excellent 
criticism on the narrow and dead classification of 



LIFE AND LETTERS IN NEW ENGLAND. 319 

what passed for science ; and the joy with which it 
was greeted was an instinct of the people which no 
true philosopher would fail to profit by. But while 
society remained in doubt between the indignation 
of the old school and the audacity of the new, a 
higher note sounded. Unexpected aid from high 
quarters came to iconoclasts. The German poet 
Goethe revolted against the science of the day, 
against French and English science, declared war 
against the great name of Newton, proposed his 
own new and simple optics : in Botany, his sim- 
ple theory of metamorphosis ; — the eye of a leaf 
is all ; every part of the plant from root to fruit is 
only a modified leaf, the branch of a tree is noth- 
ing but a leaf whose serratures have become twigs. 
He extended this into anatomy and animal life, and 
his views were accepted. The revolt became a rev- 
olution. Schelling and Oken introduced their 
ideal natural philosophy, Hegel his metaphysics, 
and extended it to Civil History. 

The result in literature and the general mind 
was a return to law ; in science, in politics, in so- 
cial life ; as distinguished from the profligate man- 
ners and politics of earlier times. The age was 
moral. Every immorality is a departure from na- 
ture, and is punished by natural loss and defor- 
mity. The popularity of Combe's Constitution of 
Man ; the humanity which was the aim of all the 



320 HISTORIC NOTES OF 

multitudinous works of Dickens ; the tendency 
even of Punch's caricature, was all on the side of 
the people. There was a breath of new air, much 
vague expectation, a consciousness of power not yet 
finding its determinate aim. 

I attribute much importance to two papers of 
Dr. Channing, one on Milton and one on Napoleon, 
which were the first specimens in this country of 
that large criticism which in England had given 
power and fame to the Edinburgh Review. They 
were widely read, and of course immediately fruit- 
ful in provoking emulation which lifted the style of 
Journalism. Dr. Channing, whilst he lived, was 
the star of the American Church, and we then 
thought, if we do not still think, that he left no 
successor in the pulpit. He could never be re- 
ported, for his eye and voice could not be printed, 
and his discourses lose their best in losing them. 
He was made for the public ; his cold temperament 
made him the most unprofitable private companion ; 
but all America would have been impoverished in 
wanting him. We could not then spare a single 
word he uttered in public, not so much as the read- 
ing a lesson in Scripture, or a hymn, and it is cu- 
rious that his printed writings are almost a history 
of the times ; as there was no great public interest, 
political, literary, or even economical (for he wrote 
on the Tariff), on which he did not leave some 



LIFE AND LETTERS IN NEW ENGLAND. 321 

printed record of his brave and thoughtful opinion. 
A poor little invalid all his life, he is yet one of 
those men who vindicate the power of the American 
race to produce greatness. 

Dr. Channing took counsel in 1840 with George 
Eipley, to the point whether it were possible to 
bring cultivated, thoughtful people together, and 
make society that deserved the name. He had 
earlier talked with Dr. John Collins Warren on 
the like purpose, who admitted the wisdom of the 
design and undertook to aid him in making the 
experiment. Dr. Channing repaired to Dr. War- 
ren's house on the appointed evening, with large 
thoughts which he wished to open. He found a 
well-chosen assembly of gentlemen variously distin- 
guished ; there was mutual greeting and introduc- 
tion, and they were chatting agreeably on indiffer- 
ent matters and drawing gently towards their great 
expectation, when a side-door opened, the whole 
company streamed in to an oyster supper, crowned 
by excellent wines ; and so ended the first attempt 
to establish aesthetic society in Boston. 

Some time afterwards Dr. Channing opened his 
mind to Mr. and Mrs. Ripley, and with some care 
they invited a limited party of ladies and gentle- 
men. I had the honor to be present. Though I 
recall the fact, I do not retain any instant conse- 
quence of this attempt, or any connection between 

VOL. X. 81 



322 HISTORIC NOTES OF 

it and the new zeal of the friends who at that time 
began to be drawn together by sjmipathy of studies 
and of aspiration. Margaret Fuller, George Rip- 
ley, Dr. Convers Francis, Theodore Parker, Dr. 
Hedge, Mr. Brownson, James Freeman Clarke, 
William H. Channing, and many others, gradually 
drew together and from time to time spent an af- 
ternoon at each other's houses in a serious conver- 
sation. With them was always one well-known 
form, a pure idealist, not at all a man of letters, 
nor of any practical talent, nor a writer of books ; 
a man quite too cold and contemplative for the al- 
liances of friendship, with rare simplicity and 
grandeur of perception, who read Plato as an equal, 
and inspired his companions only in proportion as 
they were intellectual, — whilst the men of talent 
complained of the want of point and precision in 
this abstract and religious thinker. 

These fine conversations, of course, were incom- 
prehensible to some in the company, and they had 
their revenge in their little joke. One declared 
that " It seemed to him like going to heaven in a 
swing ; " another reported that, at a knotty point 
in the discourse, a sympathizing Englishman with 
a squeaking voice interrupted with the question, 
"Mr. Alcott, a lady near me desires to inquire 
whether omnipotence abnegates attribute ? " 

I think there prevailed at that time a general be- 



LIFE AND LETTERS IN NEW ENGLAND. 823 

lief in Boston that there was some concert of doc- 
trinaires to establish certain opinions and inaugu- 
rate some movement in literature, philosophy, and 
religion, of which design the supposed conspirators 
were quite innocent ; for there was no concert, and 
only here and there two or three men or women 
who read and wrote, each alone, with unusual vi- 
vacity. Perhaps they only agreed in having fallen 
upon Coleridge and Wordsworth and Goethe, then 
on Carlyle, with pleasure and sympathy. Other- 
wise, their education and reading were not marked, 
but had the American superficialness, and their 
studies were solitary. I suppose all of them were 
surprised at this rumor of a school or sect, and cer- 
tainly at the name of Transcendentalism, given no- 
body knows by whom, or when it was first applied. 
As these persons became in the common chances of 
society acquainted with each other, there resulted 
certainly strong friendships, which of course were 
exclusive in proportion to their heat : and perhaps 
those persons who were mutually the best friends 
were the most private and had no ambition of pub- 
lishing their letters, diaries, or conversation. 

From that time meetings were held for conversa- 
tion, with very little form, from house to house, of 
people engaged in studies, fond of books, and watch- 
ful of all the intellectual light from whatever quar- 
ter it flowed. Nothing could be less formal, yet the 



324 HISTORIC NOTES OF 

intelligence and character and varied ability of the 
company gave it some notoriety and perhaps waked 
curiosity as to its aims and results. 

Nothing more serious came of it than the modest 
quarterly journal called " The Dial " which, under 
the editorship of Margaret Fuller, and later of some 
other, enjoyed its obscurity for four years. All its 
papers were unpaid contributions, and it was rather 
a work of friendship among the narrow circle of 
students than the organ of any party. Perhaps its 
writers were its chief readers: yet it contained 
some noble papers by Margaret Fuller, and some 
numbers had an instant exhausting sale, because 
of papers by Theodore Parker. 

Theodore Parker was our Savonarola, an excel- 
lent scholar, in frank and affectionate communica- 
tion with the best minds of his day, yet the tribune 
of the people, and the stout Reformer to urge and 
defend every cause of humanity with and for the 
humblest of mankind. He was no artist. Higlily 
refined persons might easily miss in him the ele- 
ment of beauty. What he said was mere fact, al- 
most offended you, so bald and detached ; little 
cared he. He stood altogether for practical truth ; 
and so to the last. He used every day and hour of 
his short life, and his character appeared in the last 
moments with the same firm control as in the mid- 
day of strength. I habitually apply to him the 



LIFE AND LETTERS IN NEW ENGLAND. 325 

words of a French philosopher who speaks of " the 
man of Nature who abominates the steam-engine 
and the factory. His vast hmgs breathe independ- 
ence with the air of the mountains and the woods." 
The vulgar politician disposed of this circle 
cheaply as " the sentimental class." State Street 
had an instinct that they invalidated contracts and 
threatened the stability of stocks ; and it did not 
fancy brusque manners. Society always values, 
even in its teachers, inoffensive people, susceptible 
of conventional polish. The clergyman who would 
live in the city may have piety, but must have taste, 
whilst there was often coming, among these, some 
John the Baptist, wild from the woods, rude, hairy, 
careless of dress and quite scornful of the etiquette 
of cities. There was a pilgrim in those days walking 
in the country who stopped at every door where he 
hoped to find hearing for his doctrine, which was, 
Never to give or receive money. He was a poor 
printer, and explained with simple warmth the be- 
lief of himself and five or six young men with 
whom he agreed in opinion, of the vast mischief of 
our insidious coin. He thought every one should 
labor at some necessary product, and as soon as he 
had made more than enough for himself, were it 
corn, or paper, or cloth, or boot-jacks, he should 
give of the commodity to any applicant, and in turn 
go to his neighbor for any article which he had to 



326 HISTORIC NOTES OF 

spare. Of course we were curious to know how he 
sped in his experiments on the neighbor, and his 
anecdotes were interesting, and often highly credit- 
able. But he had the courage which so stern a re- 
turn to Arcadian manners required, and had learned 
to sleep, in cold nights, when the farmer at whose 
door he knocked declined to give him a bed, on a 
wagon covered with the buffalo-robe under the shed, 
— or under the stars, when the farmer denied 
the shed and the buffalo-robe. I think he persisted 
for two years in his brave practice, but did not en- 
large his church of believers. 

These reformers were a new class. Instead of 
the fiery souls of the Puritans, bent on hanging the 
Quaker, burning the witch and banishing the Ro- 
manist, these were gentle souls, with peaceful and 
even with genial disj)ositions, casting sheep's-eyes 
even on Fourier and his houris. It was a time 
when the air was full of reform. Robert Owen of 
Lanark came hither from England in 1845, and 
read lectures or held conversations wherever he 
found listeners; the most amiable, sanguine and 
candid of men. He had not the least doubt that 
he had hit on a right and perfect socialism, or that 
all mankind would adopt it. He was then seventy 
years old, and being asked, " Well, Mr. Owen, who 
is your disciple ? How many men are there pos- 
sessed of your views who will remain after you are 



LIFE AND LETTERS IN NEW ENGLAND. 32T 

gone, to put them in practice ? " " Not one," was 
his reply. Robert Owen knew Fourier in his old 
age. He said that Fourier learned of him all 
the truth he had ; the rest of his system was imag- 
ination, and the imagination of a banker. Owen 
made the best impression by his rare benevolence. 
His love of men made us forget his " Three Errors." 
His charitable construction of men and their actions 
was invariable. He was the better Christian in 
his controversy with Christians, and he interpreted 
with great generosity the acts of the " Holy Alli- 
ance," and Prince Metternich, with whom the per- 
severing doctrinaire had obtained interviews ; 
" Ah," he said, " you may depend on it there are 
as tender hearts and as much good will to serve 
men, in palaces, as in colleges." 

And truly I honor the generous ideas of the So- 
cialists, the magnificence of their theories, and the 
enthusiasm with which they have been urged. 
They appeared the inspired men of their time. 
Mr. Owen preached his doctrine of labor and re- 
ward, with the fidelity and devotion of a saint, to 
the slow ears of his generation. Fourier, almost 
as wonderful an example of the mathematical mind 
of France as La Place or Napoleon, turned a truly 
vast arithmetic to the question of social misery, and 
has put men under the obligation which a generous 
mind always confers, of conceiving magnificent 



328 HISTORIC NOTES OF 

hopes and making great demands as the right of 
man. He took his measure of that which all should 
and might enjoy, from no soup-society or charity- 
concert, but from the refinements of palaces, the 
wealth of universities, and the triumphs of artists. 
He thought nobly. A man is entitled to pure air, 
and to the air of good conversation in his bringing 
up, and not, as we or so many of us, to the poor- 
smell and musty chambers, cats and fools. Fourier 
carried a whole French Revolution in his head, and 
much more. Here was arithmetic on a huge scale. 
His ciphering goes where ciphering never went be- 
fore, namely, into stars, atmospheres, and animals, 
and men and women, and classes of every character. 
It was the most entertaining of French romances, 
and could not but suggest vast possibilities of re- 
form to the coldest and least sanguine. 

We had an opportunity of learning something of 
these Socialists and their theory, from the indefat- 
igable apostle of the sect in New York, Albert 
Brisbane. Mr. Brisbane pushed his doctrine with 
all the force of memory, talent, honest faith and 
importunacy. As we listened to his exposition it 
appeared to us the sublime of mechanical philoso- 
phy ; for the system was the perfection of arrange- 
ment arid contrivance. The force of arrangement 
could no farther go. The merit of the plan was 
that it was a system ; that it had not the partiality 



LIFE AND LETTERS IN NEW ENGLAND. 329 

and hint-and-fragment character of most popular 
schemes, but was coherent and comprehensive of 
facts to a wonderful degree. It was not daunted 
by distance, or magnitude, or remoteness of any 
sort, but strode about nature with a giant's step, 
and skipped no fact, but wove its large Ptolemaic 
web of cycle and epicycle, of phalanx and phalan- 
stery, with laudable assiduity. Mechanics were 
pushed so far as fairly to meet spiritualism. One 
could not but be struck with strange coincidences 
betwixt Fourier and Swedenborg. Genius hitherto 
has been shamefully misapplied, a mere trifler. It 
must now set itself to raise the social condition of 
man and to redress the disorders of the planet he 
inhabits. The Desert of Sahara, the Campagna di 
Roma, the frozen Polar circles, which by their pes- 
tilential or hot or cold airs poison the temperate re- 
gions, accuse man. Society, concert, co-operation, 
is the secret of the coming Paradise. By reason of 
the isolation of men at the present day, all work is 
drudgery. By concert and the allowing each la- 
borer to choose his own work, it becomes pleasure. 
"Attractive Industry" would speedily subdue, by 
adventurous scientific and persistent tillage, the 
pestilential tracts; would equalize temperature, 
give health to the globe and cause the earth to yield 
"healthy imponderable fluids" to the solar system, 
as now it yields noxious fluids. The hyaena, the 



330 HISTORIC NOTES OF 

jackal, the gnat, the bug, the flea, were all benef- 
icent parts of the system ; the good Fourier knew 
what those creatures should have been, had not the 
mould slipped, through the bad state of the atmos- 
phere ; caused no doubt by the same vicious impon- 
derable fluids. All these shall be redressed by hu- 
man culture, and the useful goat and dog and inno- 
cent poetical moth, or the wood-tick to consume 
decomposing wood, shall take their place. It takes 
sixteen hundred and eighty men to make one Man, 
complete in all the faculties ; that is, to be sure 
that you have got a good joiner, a good cook, a 
barber, a poet, a judge, an umbrella-maker, a mayor 
and alderman, and so on. Your community should 
consist of two thousand persons, to prevent acci- 
dents of omission ; and each community should 
take up six thousand acres of land. Now fancy 
the earth planted with fifties and hundreds of these 
phalanxes side by side, — what tillage, what arch- 
itecture, what refectories, what dormitories, what 
reading-rooms, what concerts, what lectures, what 
gardens, what baths ! What is not in one will be 
in another, and many will be within easy distance. 
Then know you one and all, that Constantinople 
is the natural capital of the globe. There, in the 
Golden Horn, will the Arch-Phalanx be estab* 
lished; there will the Omniarch reside. Aladdin 
and his magician, or the beautiful Scheherezade 



LIFE AND LETTERS IN NEW ENGLAND. 331 

can alone, in these prosaic times before the sight, 
describe the material splendors collected there. 
Poverty shall be abolished; deformity, stupidity 
and crime shall be no more. Genius, grace, art, 
shall abound, and it is not to be doubted but that 
in the reign of " Attractive Industry " all men will 
speak in blank verse. 

Certainly we listened with great pleasure to such 
gay and magnificent pictures. The ability and 
earnestness of the advocate and his friends, the 
comprehensiveness of their theory, its apparent di- 
rectness of proceeding to the end they would se- 
cure, the indignation they felt and uttered in the 
presence of so much social misery, commanded our 
attention and respect. It contained so much truth, 
and promised in the attempts that shall be made to 
realize it so much valuable instruction, that we are 
engaged to observe every step of its progress. Yet 
in spite of the assurances of its friends that it was 
new and widely discriminated from all other plans 
for the regeneration of society, we could not exempt 
it from the criticism which we apply to so many 
projects for reform with which the brain of the age 
teems. Our feeling was that Fourier had skipped 
no fact but one, namely Life. He treats man as a 
plastic thing, something that may be put up or 
down, ripened or retarded, moulded, polished, made 
into solid or fluid or gas, at the will of the leader ; 



332 HISTORIC NOTES OF 

or perhaps as a vegetable, from which, though now 
a poor crab, a very good peach can by manure and 
exposure be in time produced, — but skips the fac- 
ulty of life, which spawns and scorns system and 
system-makers ; which eludes all conditions ; which 
makes or supplants a thousand phalanxes and New 
Harmonies with each pulsation. There is an order 
in which in a sound mind the faculties always ap- 
pear, and which, according to the strength of the 
individual, they seek to realize in the surrounding 
world. The value of Fourier's system is that it is 
a statement of such an order externized, or carried 
outward into its correspondence in facts. The 
mistake is that this particular order and series is 
to be imposed, by force or preaching and votes, on 
all men, and carried into rigid execution. But 
what is true and good must not only be begun by 
life, but must be conducted to its issues by life. 
Could not the conceiver of this design have also be- 
lieved that a similar model lay in every mind, and 
that the method of each associate might be trusted, 
as well as that of his particular Committee and 
General Office, No. 200 Broadway ? Nay, that it 
would be better to say, Let us be lovers and ser- 
vants of that which is just, and straightway every 
man becomes a centre of a holy and beneficent re- 
public, which he sees to include all men in its law, 
like that of Plato, and of Christ. Before such a 



LIFE AND LETTERS IN NE W ENGLAND. 333 

man the whole world becomes Fourierized or Christ- 
ized or humanized, and in obedience to his most 
private being he finds himself, according to his pre- 
sentiment, though against all sensuous probability, 
acting in strict concert with all others who followed 
their private light. 

Yet, in a day of small, sour and fierce schemes, 
one is admonished and cheered by a project of such 
friendly aims and of such bold and generous pro- 
portion ; there is an intellectual courage and 
strength in it which is superior and commanding ; 
it certifies the presence of so much truth in the 
theory, and in so far is destined to be fact. 

It argued singular courage, the adoption of Fou- 
rier's system, to even a limited extent, with his 
books lying before the world only defended by the 
thin veil of the French language. The Stoic said, 
Forbear, Fourier said. Indulge. Fourier was of the 
opinion of St. Evremond ; abstinence from pleas- 
ure appeared to him a great sin. Fourier was very 
French indeed. He labored under a misapprehen- 
sion of the nature of women. The Fourier mar- 
riage was a calculation how to secure the greatest 
amount of kissing that the infirmity of human con- 
stitution admitted. It was false and prurient, full 
of absurd French superstitions about women ; igno- 
rant how serious and how moral their nature al- 
ways is ; how chaste is their organization ; how 
lav/ful a class. 



334 HISTORIC NOTES OF 

It is the worst of community that it must inevi- 
tably transform into charlatans the leaders, by the 
endeavor continually to meet the expectation and 
admiration of this eager crowd of men and women 
seeking they know not what. Unless he have a 
Cossack roughness of clearing himself of what be- 
longs not, charlatan he must be. 

It was easy to see what must be the fate of this 
fine system in any serious and comprehensive at- 
tempt to set it on foot in this country. As soon as 
our people got wind of the doctrine of Marriage 
held by this master, it would fall at once into the 
hands of a lawless crew who would flock in troops 
to so fair a game, and, like the dreams of poetic 
people on the first outbreak of the old French Eev- 
olution, so theirs would disappear in a slime of 
mire and blood. 

There is of course to every theory a tendency to 
run to an extreme, and to forget the limitations. In 
our free institutions, where every man is at liberty 
to choose his home and his trade, and all possible 
modes of working and gaining are open to him, 
fortunes are easily made by thousands, as in no 
other country. Then property proves too much 
for the man, and the men of science, art, intellect, 
are pretty sure to degenerate into selfish house- 
keepers, dependent on wine, coffee, furnace-heat, 
gas-light and fine furniture. Then instantly things 



LIFE AND LETTERS IN NEW ENGLAND. 335 

swing the other way, and we suddenly find that 
civilization crowed too soon ; that what we bragged 
as triumphs were treacheries ; that we have opened 
the wrong door and let the enemy into the castle ; 
tliat civilization was a mistake ; that nothing is so 
vulgar as a great warehouse of rooms full of furni- 
ture and trumpery ; that, in the circumstances, the 
best wisdom were an auction or a fire. Since the 
foxes and the birds have the right of it, with a 
warm hole to keep out the weather, and no more, — 
a pent-house to fend the sun and rain is the house 
which lays no tax on the owner's time and thoughts, 
and which he can leave, when the sun is warm, and 
defy the robber. This was Thoreau's doctrine, who 
said that the Fourierists had a sense of duty which 
led them to devote themselves to their second-best. 
And Thoreau gave in flesh and blood and pertina- 
cious Saxon belief the purest ethics. He was more 
real and practically believing in them than any of 
his company, and fortified you at all times with an 
affirmative experience which refused to be set aside. 
Thoreau was in his own person a practical answer, 
almost a refutation, to the theories of the socialists. 
He required no Phalanx, no Government, no soci- 
ety, almost no memory. He lived extempore from 
hour to hour, like the birds and the angels ; brought 
every day a new proposition, as revolutionary as 
that of yesterday, but different: the only man of 



336 HISTORIC NOTES OF 

leisure in his town ; and his independence made all 
others look like slaves. He was a good Abbot 
Sampson, and carried a counsel in his breast. 
" Again and again I congratulate myself on my so- 
called poverty, I could not overstate this advan- 
tage." " What you call bareness and poverty, is 
to me simplicity. God could not be imkind to me 
if he should try. I love best to have each thing in 
its season only, and enjoy doing without it at all 
other times. It is the greatest of all advantages to 
enjoy no advantage at all. I have never got over 
my surprise that I should have been born into the 
most estimable place in all the world, and in the 
very nick of time too." There's an optimist for 
you. 

I regard these philanthropists as themselves the 
effects of the age in which we live, and, in common 
with so many other good facts, the efflorescence of 
the period, and predicting a good fruit that ripens. 
They were not the creators they believed them- 
selves, but they were unconscious prophets of a true 
state of society ; one which the tendencies of na- 
ture lead unto, one which always establishes itseH 
for the sane soul, though not in that manner in 
which they paint it; but they were describers of 
that which is really being done. The large cities 
are phalansteries ; and the theorists drew all their 
argument from facts already taking place in our 



LIFE AND LETTERS IN NEW ENGLAND. 337 

experience. The cheap way is to make every man 
do what lie was born for. One merchant to whom 
I described the Fourier project, thought it must 
not only succeed, but that agricultural association 
must presently fix the price of bread, and drive 
single farmers into association in self-defence, as 
the great commercial and manufacturing compa- 
nies had done. Society in England and in America 
is trying the experiment again in small pieces, in 
co-operative associations, in cheap eating-houses, as 
well as in the economies of club-houses and in 
cheap reading-rooms. 

It chanced that here in one family were two 
brothers, one a brilliant and fertile inventor, and 
close by him his own brother, a man of business, 
who knew how to direct his faculty and make it 
instantly and permanently lucrative. Why could 
not the like partnership be formed between the in- 
ventor and the man of executive talent everywhere ? 
Each man of thought is surrounded by wiser men 
than he, if they cannot write as well. Cannot he 
and they combine ? Talents supplement each other. 
Beaumont and Fletcher and many French novel- 
ists have known how to utilize such partnerships. 
Why not have a larger one, and with more various 
members ? 

Housekeepers say, " There are a thousand things 
to everjrthing," and if one must study all the 

VOL. X. 22 



338 HISTORIC NOTES OF 

strokes to be laid, all the faults to be shunned in a 
building or work of art, of its keeping, its compo- 
sition, its site, its color, there would be no end. 
But the architect, acting under a necessity to build 
the house for its purpose, finds himself helped, he 
knows not how, into all these merits of detail, and 
steering clear, though in the dark, of those dangers 
which might have shipwrecked him. 

BROOK FARM. 

The West Roxbury association was formed in 
1841, by a society of members, men and women, 
who bought a farm in West Koxbury, of about two 
hundred acres, and took possession of the place in 
April. Mr. George Ripley was the President, and 
I think Mr. Charles Dana (afterwards well known 
as one of the editors of the New York Tribune), 
was the secretary. Many members took shares by 
paying money, others held shares by their labor. 
An old house on the place was enlarged, and three 
new houses built. William Allen was at first and 
for some time the head farmer, and the work was 
distributed in orderly committees to the men and 
women. There were many employments more or 
less lucrative found for, or brought hither by 
these members, — shoemakers, joiners, sempstresses. 
They had good scholars among them, and so re- 
ceived pupils for their education. The parents of 



LIFE AND LETTERS IN NEW ENGLAND. 339 

the children in some instances wished to live there, 
and were received as boarders. Many persons at- 
tracted by the beauty of the place and the culture 
and ambition of the community, joined them as 
boarders, and lived there for years. I think the 
numbers of this mixed community soon reached 
eighty or ninety souls. 

It was a noble and generous movement in the 
projectors, to try an experimelit of better living. 
They had the feeling that our ways of living were 
too conventional and expensive, not allowing each 
to do what he had a talent for, and not permitting 
men to combine cultivation of mind and heart with 
a reasonable amount of daily labor. At the same 
time, it was an attempt to lift others with them- 
selves, and to share the advantages they should at- 
tain, with others now deprived of them. 

There was no doubt great variety of character 
and purpose in the members of the community. It 
consisted in the main of young people, — few of 
middle age, and none old. Those who inspired 
and organized it were of course persons impatient 
of the routine, the uniformity, perhaps they would 
say the squalid contentment of society around 
them, which was so timid and skeptical of any 
progress. One would say then that impulse was 
the rule in the society, without centripetal balance ; 
perhaps it would not be severe to say, intellectual 



340 HISTORIC NOTES OF 

sans-culottism, an impatience of the formal, rou- 
tinary character of our educational, religious, social 
and economical life in Massachusetts. Yet there 
was immense hope in these young people. There 
was nobleness ; there were self-sacrificing victims 
who compensated for the levity and rashness of 
their companions. The young people lived a great 
deal in a short time, and came forth some of them 
perhaps with shattered constitutions. And a few 
grave sanitary influences of character were happily 
there, which, I was assured, were always felt. 

George W. Curtis of New York, and his brother, 
of English Oxford, were members of the family 
from the first. Theodore Parker, the near neigh- 
bor of the farm and the most intimate friend of 
Mr. Ripley, was a frequent visitor. Mr. Ichabod 
Morton of Plymouth, a plain man formerly en- 
gaged through many years in the fisheries with 
success, — eccentric, with a persevering interest in 
Education, and of a very democratic religion, came 
and built a house on the farm, and he, or members 
of his family, continued there to the end. Marga- 
ret Fuller, with her joyful conversation and large 
sympathy, was often a guest, and always in corre- 
spondence with her friends. Many ladies, whom 
to name were to praise, gave character and varied 
attraction to the place. 

In and around Brook Farm, whether as mem- 



LIFE AND LETTERS IN NEW ENGLAND. 341 

bers, boarders, or visitors, were many remarkable 
persons, for character, intellect, or accomplish- 
ments. I recall one youth of the subtlest mind, I 
believe I must say the subtlest observer and diviner 
of character I ever met, living, reading, writing, 
talking there, perhaps as long as the colony held 
together ; his mind fed and overfed by whatever 
is exalted in genius, whether in Poetry or Art, in 
Drama or Music, or in social accomplishment and 
elegancy; a man of no employment or practical 
aims, a student and philosopher, who found his 
daily enjoyment not with the elders or his exact 
contemporaries so much as with the fine boys who 
were skating and playing ball or bird-hunting; 
forming the closest friendships with such, and find- 
ing his delight in the petulant heroisms of boys ; 
yet was he the chosen counsellor to whom the guar- 
dians would repair on any hitch or difficulty that 
occurred, and draw from him a wise counsel. A 
fine, subtle, inward genius, puny in body and habit 
as a girl, yet with an aplomh like a general, never 
disconcerted. He lived and thought, in 1842, such 
worlds of life ; all hinging on the thought of Being 
or Reality as opposed to consciousness ; hating in- 
tellect with the ferocity of a Swedenborg. He was 
the Abb6 or spiritual father, from his religious 
bias. His reading lay in ^schylus, Plato, Dante, 
Calderon, Shakspeare, and in modern novels and 



342 HISTORIC NOTES OF 

romances of merit. There too was Hawthorne, 
with his cold yet gentle genius, if he failed to do 
justice to this temporary home. There was the ac- 
complished Doctor of Music, who has presided over 
its literature ever since in our metropolis. Rev. 
"William Henry Channing, now of London, was 
from the first a student of Socialism in France and 
England, and in perfect sympathy with this ex- 
periment. An English baronet. Sir John Cald- 
well, was a frequent visitor, and more or less di- 
rectly interested in the leaders and the success. 

Hawthorne drew some sketches, not happily, as 
I think ; I should rather say, quite unworthy of 
his genius. No friend who knew Margaret Fuller 
could recognize her rich and brilliant genius under 
the dismal mask which the public fancied was 
meant for her in that disagreeable story. 

The Founders of Brook Farm should have this 
praise, that they made what all peoi3le try to make, 
an agreeable place to live in. All comers, even 
the most fastidious, found it the pleasantest of resi- 
dences. It is certain that freedom from household 
routine, variety of character and talent, variety of 
work, variety of means of thought and instruction, 
art, music, poetry, reading, masquerade, did not 
permit sluggishness or despondency ; broke up 
routine. There is agreement in the testimony that 
it was, to most of the associates, education; to 



LIFE AND LETTERS IN NEW ENGLAND. 343 

many, the most important period of their life, the 
birth of valued friendships, their first acquaintance 
with the riches of conversation, their training in 
behavior. The art of letter-writing, it is said, was 
immensely cultivated. Letters were always flying 
not only from house to house, but from room to 
room. It was a perpetual picnic, a French Revo- 
lution in small, an Age of Reason in a patty-pan. 

In the American social communities, the gossip 
found such vent and sway as to become despotic. 
The institutions were whispering-galleries, in which 
the adored Saxon privacy was lost. Married women 
I believe uniformly decided against the community. 
It was to them like the brassy and lacquered life in 
hotels. The common school was well enough, but 
to the common nursery they had grave objections. 
Eggs might be hatched in ovens, but the hen on 
her own account much preferred the old way. A 
hen without her chickens was but half a hen. 

It was a curious experience of the patrons and 
leaders of this noted community, in which the 
agreement with many parties was that they should 
give so many hours of instruction in mathematics, 
in music, in moral and intellectual philosophy, and 
so forth, — that in every instance the new comers 
showed themselves keenly alive to the advantages 
of the society, and were sure to avail themselves of 
every means of instruction ; their knowledge was 



344 HISTORIC NOTES OF 

increased, their manners refined, — but they be- 
came in that proportion averse to labor, and were 
charged by the heads of the departments with a 
certain indolence and selfishness. 

In practice it is always found that virtue is oc- 
casional, spotty, and not linear or cubic. Good 
people are as bad as rogues if steady performance 
is claimed; the conscience of the conscientious 
runs in veins, and the most punctilious in some 
particulars are latitudinarian in others. It was 
very gently said that people on whom beforehand 
all persons would put the utmost reliance were not 
responsible. They saw the necessity that the work 
must be done, and did it not, and it of course feU 
to be done by the few religious workers. No doubt 
there was in many a certain strength drawn from 
the fury of dissent. Thus Mr. Ripley told Theo- 
dore Parker, "There is your accomplished friend 

: he would hoe corn all Sunday if I would let 

him, but all Massachusetts could not make him do 
it on Monday." 

Of course every visitor found that there was a 
comic side to this Paradise of shepherds and shep- 
herdesses. There was a stove in every chamber, 
and every one might burn as much wood as he or 
she would saw. The ladies took cold on washing- 
day ; so it was ordained that the gentlemen-shep. 
herds should wring and hang out clothes ; which 



LIFE AND LETTERS IN NEW ENGLAND. 345 

they punctually did. And it would sometimes oc- 
cur that when they danced in the evening, clothes- 
pins dropped plentifully from their pockets. The 
country members naturally were surprised to ob- 
serve that one man ploughed all day and one looked 
out of the window all day, and perhaps drew his 
picture, and both received at night the same wages. 
One would meet also some modest pride in their 
advanced condition, signified by a frequent phrase, 
" Before we came out of civilization." 

The question which occurs to you had occurred 
much earlier to Fourier : " How in this charming 
Elysium is the dirty work to be done?" And 
long ago Fourier had exclaimed, " Ah ! I have it," 
and jumped with joy. "Don't you see," he cried, 
" that nothing so delights the young Caucasian 
child as dirt ? See the mud-pies that all children 
will make if you will let them. See how much 
more joy they find in pouring their pudding on 
the table-cloth than into their beautiful mouths. 
The children from six to eight, organized into com- 
panies with flags and uniforms, shall do this last 
function of civilization." 

In Brook Farm was this peculiarity, that there 
was no head. In every family is the father; in 
every factory, a foreman ; in a shop, a master ; in 
a boat, the skipper ; but in this Farm, no author- 
ity ; each was master or mistress of his or her ac- 



846 HISTORIC NOTES OF 

tions ; happy, hapless anarchists. They expressed, 
after much perilous experience, the conviction that 
plain dealing was the best defence of manners and 
moral between the sexes. People cannot live to- 
gether in any but necessary ways. The only can- 
didates who will present themselves will be those 
who have tried the experiment of independence 
and ambition, and have failed ; and none others 
will barter for the most comfortable equality the 
chance of superiority. Then all communities have 
quarrelled. Few people can live together on their 
merits. There must be kindred, or mutual econ- 
omy, or a common interest in their business, or 
other external tie. 

The society at Brook Farm existed, I think, 
about six or seven years, and then broke up, the 
Farm was sold, and I believe all the partners came 
out with pecuniary loss. Some of them had spent 
on it the accumulations of years. I suppose they 
all, at the moment, regarded it as a failure. I do 
not think they can so regard it now, but probably 
as an important chapter in their experience which 
has been of lifelong value. What knowledge of 
themselves and of each other, what various practical 
wisdom, what personal power, what studies of char- 
acter, what accumulated culture many of the mem- 
bers owed to it ! What mutual measure they took 
of each other ! It was a close union, like that in a 



LIFE AND LETTERS IN NEW ENGLAND. 347 

ship's cabin, of clergymen, young collegians, mer- 
chants, mechanics, farmers' sons and daughters, with 
men and women of rare opportunities and delicate 
culture, yet assembled there by a sentiment which 
all shared, some of them hotly shared, of the honesty 
of a life of labor and of the beauty of a life of hu» 
manity. The yeoman saw refined manners in per- 
sons who were his friends ; and the lady or the ro- 
mantic scholar saw the continuous strength and 
faculty in people who would have disgusted them 
but that these powers were now spent in the direc- 
tion of their own theory of life. 

I recall these few selected facts, none of them of 
much independent interest, but symptomatic of the 
times and country. I please myself with the 
thought that our American mind is not now eccen- 
tric or rude in its strength, but is beginning to show 
a quiet power, drawn from wide and abundant 
sources, proper to a Continent and to an educated 
people. If I have owed much to the special influ- 
ences I have indicated, I am not less aware of that 
excellent and increasing circle of masters in arts 
and in song and in science, who cheer the intellect 
of our cities and this country to-day, — whose ge- 
nius is not a lucky accident, but normal, and with 
broad foundation of culture, and so inspires the 
hope of steady strength advancing on itseK, and a 
day without night. 



THE CHARDON STREET CONVENTION. 



THE CHAEDON STREET CONVENTION.^ 



In the month of November, 1840, a Convention 
of Friends of Universal Reform assembled in the 
Chardon Street Chapel in Boston, in obedience to 
a call in the newspapers, signed by a few individu- 
als, inviting all persons to a public discussion of the 
institutions of the Sabbath, the Church and the 
Ministry. The Convention organized itself by the 
choice of Edmund Quincy as Moderator, spent 
three days in the consideration of the Sabbath, and 
adjourned to a day in March of the following year, 
for the discussion of the second topic. In March, 
accordingly, a three-days' sessions was holden in the 
same place, on the subject of the Church, and a 
third meeting fixed for the following November, 
which was accordingly holden ; and the Convention 
debated, for three days again, the remaining subject 
of the Priesthood. This Convention never printed 
any report of its deliberations, nor pretended to 
arrive at any result by the expression of its sense in 
formal resolutions ; — the professed objects of those 
1 The Dialj vol. iii., p. 100. 



352 THE CHARDON STREET CONVENTION. 

persons who felt the greatest interest in its meet- 
ings being simply the elucidation of truth through 
free discussion. The daily newspapers reported, at 
the time, brief sketches of the course of proceedings, 
and the remarks of the principal speakers. These 
meetings attracted a great deal of public attention, 
and were spoken of in different circles in every note 
of hope, of sympathy, of joy, of alarm, of abhorrence 
and of merriment. The composition of the assem- 
bly was rich and various. The singularity and lati- 
tude of the summons drew together, from all parts 
of New England and also from the Middle States, 
men of every shade of opinion from the straitest 
orthodoxy to the wildest heresy, and many persons 
whose church was a church of one member only. 
A great variety of dialect and of costume was no- 
ticed ; a great deal of confusion, eccentricity, and 
freak appeared, as well as of zeal and enthusiasm. 
If the assembly was disorderly, it was picturesque. 
Madmen, madwomen, men with beards, Dunkers, 
Muggletonians, Come-outers, Groaners, Agrarians, 
Seventh-day-Baptists, Quakers, Abolitionists, Cal- 
vinists. Unitarians and Philosophers, — all came 
successively to the top, and seized their moment, if 
not their hour, wherein to chide, or pray, or preach, 
or protest. The faces were a study. The most 
daring innovators and the champions -until -death 
of the old cause sat side by side. The still-living 



THE CHARDON STREET CONVENTION. 353 

merit of the oldest New England families, glow- 
ing yet after several generations, encountered the 
founders of families, fresh merit, emerging, and 
expanding the brows to a new breadth, and lighting 
a clownish face with sacred fire. The assembly- 
was characterized by the predominance of a cer- 
tain plain, sylvan strength and earnestness, whilst 
many of the most intellectual and cultivated per- 
sons attended its councils. Dr. Channing, Ed- 
ward Taylor, Bronson Alcott, Mr. Garrison, Mr. 
May, Theodore Parker, H. C. Wright, Dr. Osgood, 
William Adams, Edward Palmer, Jones Very, 
Maria W. Chapman, and many other persons of a 
mystical or sectarian or philanthropic renown, were 
present, and some of them participant. And there 
was no want of female speakers ; Mrs. Little and 
Mrs. Lucy Sessions took a pleasing and memorable 
part in the debate, and that flea of Conventions, 
Mrs. Abigail Folsom, was but too ready with her 
interminable scroll. If there was not parliamentary 
order, there was life, and the assurance of that 
constitutional love for religion and religious liberty 
which, in all periods, characterizes the inhabitants 
of this part of America. 

There was a great deal of wearisome speaking in 
each of those three-days' sessions, but relieved by 
signal passages of pure eloquence, by much vigor 
of thought, and especially by the exhibition of char* 

VOL. X. 23 



354 THE CHARDON STREET CONVENTION. 

acter, and by the victories of character. These 
men and women were in search of something better 
and more satisfying than a vote or a definition, 
and they found what they sought, or the pledge 
of it, in the attitude taken by individuals of their 
number of resistance to the insane routine of par- 
liamentary usage ; in the lofty reliance on prin- 
ciples, and the prophetic dignity and transfigura- 
tion which accompanies, even amidst opposition 
and ridicule, a man whose mind is made up to obey 
the great inward Commander, and who does not 
anticipate his own action, but awaits confidently 
the new emergency for the new counsel. By no 
means the least value of this Convention, in our 
eye, was the scope it gave to the genius of Mr. 
Alcott, and not its least instructive lesson was the 
gradual but sure ascendency of his spirit, in spite 
of the incredulity and derision with which he is at 
first received, and in spite, we might add, of his 
own failures. Moreover, although no decision was 
had, and no action taken on all the great points 
mooted in the discussion, yet the Convention 
brought together many remai'kable persons, face to 
face, and gave occasion to memorable interviews 
and conversations, in the hall, in the lobbies, or 
around the doors. 



EZRA RIPLEY, D. D. 



We love the venerable house 

Our fathers built to God : 
In Heaven are kept their grateful vows. 

Their dust endears the sod. 

From humble tenements around 

Came up the pensive train 
And in the church a blessing found 

That filled their homes again. 



EZRA RIPLEY, D. D.i 



Ezra Ripley was born May 1, 1751 (O. S.)> 
at Woodstock, Connecticut. He was the fifth of 
the nineteen children of Noah and Lydia (Kent) 
Ripley. Seventeen of these nineteen children mar- 
ried, and it is stated that the mother died leaving 
nineteen children, one hundred and two grandchil- 
dren and ninety-six great-grandchildren. The fa- 
ther was born at Hingham, on the farm purchased 
by his ancestor, William Ripley, of England, at 
the first settlement of the town ; which farm has 
been occupied by seven or eight generations. Ezra 
Ripley followed the business of farming till sixteen 
years of age, when his father wished him to be 

1 This sketch was written for the Social Circle, a club in 
Concord now more than a century old, and said to be the lin- 
eal descendant of the Committee of Safety in the Revolution. 
Mr. Emerson was a member for many years and greatly val- 
ued its weekly evening meetings, held, during the winter, at 
the houses of the members. After the death of Dr. Ripley, 
an early member and connected with him by marriage, Mr. 
Emerson was asked to prepare the customary Memoir for 
the Club Book. 



358 EZRA RIPLEY, D. D. 

qualified to teach a grammar school, not thinking 
himself able to send one son to college without in- 
jury to his other children. With this view, the fa- 
ther agreed with the late Rev. Dr. Forbes of 
Gloucester, then minister of North Brookfield, to 
fit Ezra for college by the time he should be 
twenty-one years of age, and to have him labor 
during the time sufficiently to pay for his instruc- 
tion, clothing and books. 

But, when fitted for college, the son could not 
be contented with teaching, which he had tried the 
preceding winter. He had early manifested a de- 
sire for learning, and could not be satisfied without 
a public education. Always inclined to notice 
ministers, and frequently attempting, when only 
five or six years old, to imitate them by preaching, 
now that he had become a professor of religion he 
had an ardent desire to be a preacher of the gospel. 
He had to encounter great difficulties, but, through 
a kind providence and the patronage of Dr. Forbes, 
he entered Harvard University, July, 1772. The 
commencement of the Revolutionary War greatly 
interrupted his education at college. In 1775, in 
his senior year, the college was removed from Cam- 
bridge to this town. The studies were much broken 
up. Many of the students entered the army, and 
the class never returned to Cambridge. There 
were an unusually large number of distinguished 



EZRA RIPLEY, D. D. 359 

men in this class of 1776 : Christopher Gore, Gov- 
ernor of Massachusetts and Senator in Congress ; 
Samuel Sewall, Chief Justice of Massachusetts; 
George Thacher, Judge of the Supreme Court ; 
Royall Tyler, Chief Justice of Vermont ; and the 
late learned Dr. Prince, of Salem. 

Mr. Ripley was ordained minister of Concord 
November 7, 1778. He married, November 16, 
1780, Mrs. Phoebe (Bliss) Emerson, then a widow 
of thirty-nine, with five children. They had three 
children : Samuel, born May 11, 1783 ; Daniel 
Bliss, born August 1, 1784 ; Sarah, born April 8, 
1789. He died September 21, 1841, 

To these facts, gathered chiefly from his own 
diary, and stated nearly in his own words, I can 
only add a few traits from memory. 

He was identified with the ideas and forms of 
the New England Church, which expired about the 
same time with him, so that he and his coevals 
seemed the rear guard of the great camp and army 
of the Puritans, which, however in its last days de- 
clining into formalism, in the heyday of its strength 
liad planted and liberated America. It was a pity 
that his old meeting-house should have been mod- 
ernized in his time. I am sure all who remember 
both will associate his form with whatever was 
grave and droll in the old, cold, unpainted, uncar- 
peted, square-pewed meeting-house, with its fom* 



360 EZRA RIPLEY, D. D, 

iron-gray deacons in their little box under the pul 
pit, — with Watts's hymns, with long prayers, rich 
with the diction of ages ; and not less with the re- 
port like musketry from the movable seats. He 
and his contemporaries, the old New England 
clergy, were believers in what is called a particular 
providence, — certainly, as they held it, a very par- 
ticular providence, — following the narrowness of 
King David and the Jews, who thought the uni- 
verse existed only or mainly for their church and 
congregation. Perhaps I cannot better illustrate 
this tendency than by citing a record from the 
diary of the father of his predecessor,^ the minister 
of Maiden, written in the blank leaves of the almar 
nac for the year 1735. The minister writes against 
January 31st : " Bought a shay for 27 pounds, 10 
shillings. The Lord grant it may be a comfort and 
blessing to my family." In March following he 
notes : " Had a safe and comfortable journey to 
York." But April 24th, we find : " Shay over- 
turned, with my wife and I in it, yet neither of us 
much hurt. Blessed be our gracious Preserver. 
Part of the shay, as it lay upon one side, went over 
my wife, and yet she was scarcely anything hurt. 
How wonderful the preservation." Then again, 
May 5th : " Went to the beach with three of the 
children. The beast, being frightened when we 
1 Rev. Joseph Emerson. 



EZRA RIPLEY, D. D. 361 

were all out of the shay, overturned and broke it. 
I desire (I hope I desire it) that the Lord would 
teach me suitably to repent this Providence, to 
make suitable remarks on it, and to be suitably af- 
fected with it. Have I done well to get me a shay ? 
Have I not been proud or too fond of this conven- 
ience ? Do I exercise the faith in the Divine care 
and protection which I ought to do? Should I 
not be more in my study and less fond of diver- 
sion ? Do I not withhold more than is meet from 
pious and charitable uses?" Well, on 15th May 
we have this : " Shay brought home ; mending cost 
thirty shillings. Favored in this respect beyond 
expectation." 16th May: "My wife and I rode 
together to Rumney Marsh. The beast frighted 
several times." And at last we have this record, 
June 4th: "Disposed of my shay to Rev. Mr. 
White." 

The same faith made what was strong and what 
was weak in Dr. Ripley and his associates. He 
was a perfectly sincere man, punctual, severe, but 
just and charitable, and if he made his forms a 
strait-jacket to others, he wore the same himself all 
his years. Trained in this church, and very well 
qualified by his natural talent to work in it, it was 
never out of his mind. He looked at every person 
and thing from the parochial point of view. I re- 
member, when a boy, driving about Concord with 



862 EZRA RIPLEY, D. D. 

him, and in passing each house he told the story of 
the family that lived in it, and especially he gave 
me anecdotes of the nine church members who had 
made a division in the church in the time of his 
predecessor, and showed me how every one of the 
nine had come to bad fortune or to a bad end. 
His prayers for rain and against the lightning, 
" that it may not lick up our spirits ; " and for 
good weather ; and against sickness and insanity ; 
" that we have not been tossed to and fro until the 
dawning of the day, that we have not been a terror 
to ourselves and others ; " are well remembered, 
and his own entire faith that these petitions were 
not to be overlooked, and were entitled to a favor- 
able answer. Some of those around me will re- 
member one occasion of severe drought in this vi- 
cinity, when the late Eev. Mr. Goodwin offered to 
relieve the Doctor of the duty of leading in prayer ; 
but the Doctor suddenly remembering the season, 
rejected his offer with some humor, as with an air 
that said to all the congregation, " This is no time 
for you young Cambridge men ; the affair, sir, is 
getting serious. I will pray myself." One August 
afternoon, when I was in his hayfield helping him 
with his man to rake up his hay, I well remember 
his«pleading, almost reproachful looks at the sky, 
when the thunder gust was coming up to spoil his 
hay. He raked very fast, then looked at the cloud, 



EZRA RIPLEY, D. D. 863 

and said, " We are in the Lord's hand ; mind your 
rake, George ! We are in the Lord's hand ; " and 
seemed to say, " You know me ; this field is mine, 
— Dr. Ripley's, — thine own servant ! " 

He used to tell the story of one of his old friends, 
the minister of Sudbury, who, being at the Thurs- 
day lecture in Boston, heard the officiating clergy- 
man praying for rain. As soon as the service was 
over, he went to the petitioner, and said, " You 
Boston ministers, as soon as a tulip wilts under 
your windows, go to church and pray for rain, un- 
til all Concord and Sudbury are under water." I 
once rode with him to a house at Nine Acre Cor- 
ner to attend the funeral of the father of a family. 
He mentioned to me on the way his fears that the 
oldest son, who was now to succeed to the farm, 
was becoming intemperate. We presently arrived, 
and the Doctor addressed each of the mourners sep- 
arately : " Sir, I condole with you." " Madam, I 
condole with you." " Sir, I knew your great-grand- 
father. When I came to this town, your great- 
grandfather was a substantial farmer in this very 
place, a member of the church, and an excellent 
citizen. Your grandfather followed him, and was 
a virtuous man. Now your father is to be carried 
to his grave, full of labors and virtues. There is 
none of that large family left but you, and it rests 
with you to bear up the good name and usefulness 



364 EZRA RIPLEY, D. D. 

of your ancestors. If you fail, — * Ichabod, the glory 
is departed.' Let us pray." Eight manly he was, 
and the manly thing he could always say. I can 
remember a little speech he made to me, when the 
last tie of blood which held me and my brothers to 
his house was broken by the death of his daughter. 
He said, on parting, " I wish you and your broth- 
ers to come to this house as you have always done. 
You will not like to be excluded ; I shall not like 
to be neglected." 

When " Put " Merriam, after his release from 
the state prison, had the effrontery to call on the 
doctor as an old acquaintance, in the midst of gen- 
eral conversation Mr. Frost came in, and the doc- 
tor presently said, " Mr. Merriam, my brother and 
colleague, Mr. Frost, has come to take tea with me. 
I regret very much the causes (which you know 
very well) which make it impossible for me to ask 
you to stay and break bread with us." With the 
Doctor's views it was a matter of religion to say 
thus much. He had a reverence and love of soci- 
ety, and the patient, continuing courtesy, carrying 
out every respectful attention to the end, which 
marks what is called the manners of the old school. 
His hospitality obeyed Charles Lamb's rule, and 
" ran fine to the last." His partiality for ladies 
was always strong, and was by no means abated by 
time. He claimed privilege of years, was much ad- 



EZRA RIPLEY, D. D. 365 

dieted to kissing ; spared neither maid, wife, nor 
widow, and, as a lady thus favored remarked to 
me, " seemed as if he was going to make a meal of 
you." 

He was very credulous, and as he was no reader 
of books or journals, he knew nothing beyond the 
columns of his weekly religious newspaper, the 
tracts of his sect, and perhaps the Middlesex Yeo- 
man. He was the easy dupe of any tonguey agent, 
whether colonizationist or anti-papist, or charlatan 
of iron combs, or tractors, or phrenology, or mag- 
netism, who went by. At the time when Jack 
Downing's letters were in every paper, he repeated 
to me at table some of the particulars of that gen- 
tleman's intimacy with General Jackson, in a man- 
ner that betrayed to me at once that he took the 
whole for fact. To undeceive him, I hastened to 
recall some particulars to show the absurdity of the 
thing, as the Major and the President going out 
skatmg on the Potomac, etc. " Why, " said the 
Doctor with perfect faith, " it was a bright moon- 
light night ; " and I am not sure that he did not 
die in the belief in the reality of Major Downing. 
Like other credulous men, he was opinionative, 
and, as I well remember, a great browbeater of 
the poor old fathers who still survived from the 
19th of April, to the end that they should testify to 
his history as he had written it. 



366 EZRA RIPLEY, D. D. 

He was a man so kind and sympathetic, his char- 
acter was so transparent, and his merits so intelli- 
gible to all observers, that he was very justly ap- 
preciated in this community. He was a natural 
gentleman, no dandy, but courtly, hospitable, manly 
and public - spirited ; his nature social, his house 
open to all men. We remember the remark made 
by the old farmer who used to travel hither from 
Maine, that no horse from the Eastern coimtry 
would go by the doctor's gate. Travellers from 
the West and North and South bear the like testi- 
mony. His brow was serene and open to his vis- 
itor, for he loved men, and he had no studies, no 
occupations, which company could interrupt. His 
friends were his study, and to see them loosened 
his talents and his tongue. In his house dwelt or- 
der and prudence and plenty. There was no waste 
and no stint. He was open-handed and just and 
generous. Ingratitude and meanness in his benefi- 
ciaries did not wear out his compassion ; he bore 
the insult, and the next day his basket for the beg- 
gar, his horse and chaise for the cripple, were at 
their door. Though he knew the value of a dollar 
as well as another man, yet he loved to buy dearer 
and sell cheaper than others. He subscribed to aU 
charities, and it is no reflection on others to say 
that he was the most public-spirited man in the 
town. The late Dr. Gardiner, in a funeral sermon 



EZRA RIPLEY, D. D. 3G7 

on some parishioner whose virtues did not readily 
come to mind, honestly said, " He was good at 
fires." Dr. Ripley had many virtues, and yet all 
will remember that even in his old age, if the fire- 
bell was rung, he was instantly on horseback with 
his buckets and bag. 

He showed even in his fireside discourse traits of 
that pertinency and judgment, softening ever and 
anon into elegancy, which make the distinction of 
the scholar, and which, under better discipline, 
might have ripened into a Bentley or a Porson. He 
had a foresight, when he opened his mouth, of all 
that he would say, and he marched straight to the 
conclusion. In debate in the vestry of the Lyceum, 
the structure of his sentences was admirable ; so 
neat, so natural, so terse, his words fell like stones ; 
and often, though quite unconscious of it, his speech 
was a satire on the loose, voluminous, draggle-tail 
periods of other speakers. He sat down when he 
had done. A man of anecdote, his talk in the 
parlor was chiefly narrative. We remember the 
remark of a gentleman who listened with much de- 
light to his conversation at the time when the Doc- 
tor was preparing to go to Baltimore and Wash- 
ington, that " a man who could tell a story so well 
was company for kings and John Quincy Adams." 

Sage and savage strove harder in him than in 
any of my acquaintances, each g^etting the mastery 



368 EZRA RIPLEY, D. D. 

by turns, and pretty sudden turns : " Save us from 
the extremity of cold and these violent sudden 
changes." " The society will meet after the Ly- 
ceum, as it is difficult to bring people together in 
the evening, — and no moon." " Mr. N. F. is 
dead, and I expect to hear of the death of Mr. B. 
It is cruel to separate old people from their wives 
in this cold weather." 

With a very limited acquaintance with books, 
his knowledge was an external experience, an In- 
dian wisdom, the observation of such facts as coun- 
try life for nearly a century could supply. He 
watched with interest the garden, the field, the or- 
chard, the house and the barn, horse, cow, sheep 
and dog, and all the common objects that engage 
the thought of the farmer. He kept his eye on the 
horizon, and knew the weather like a sea-captain. 
The usual experiences of men, birth, marriage, sick- 
ness, death, burial ; the common temptations ; the 
common ambitions ; — he studied them all, and 
sympathized so well in these that he was excellent 
company and counsel to all, even the most humble 
and ignorant. With extraordinary states of mind, 
with states of enthusiasm or enlarged speculation, 
he had no sympathy, and pretended to none. He 
was sincere, and kept to his point, and his mark 
was never remote. His conversation was strictly 
personal and apt to the party and the occasioa 



EZRA RIPLEY, D. D. 369 

An eminent skill he had in saying difficult and 
unspeakable things ; in delivering to a man or a 
woman that which all their other friends had ab- 
stained from saying, in uncovering the bandage 
from a sore place, and applying the surgeon's knife 
with a truly surgical spirit. Was a man a sot, or 
a spendthrift, or too long time a bachelor, or sus- 
pected of some hidden crime, or had he quarrelled 
with his wife, or collared his father, or was there 
any cloud or suspicious circumstances in his behav- 
ior, the good pastor knew his way straight to that 
point, believing himself entitled to a full explana- 
tion, and whatever relief to the conscience of both 
parties plain speech could effect was sure to be pro- 
cured. In all such passages he justified himself to 
the conscience, and commonly to the love, of the 
persons concerned. He was the more competent 
to these searching discourses from his knowledge 
of family history. He knew everybody's grand- 
father, and seemed to address each person rather 
as the representative of his house and name, than 
as an individual. In him have perished more local 
and personal anecdotes of this village and vicinity 
than are possessed by any survivor. This intimate 
knowledge of families, and this skill of speech, and 
stiU more, his sympathy, made him incomparable 
in his parochial visits, and in his exhortations and 
prayers. He gave himself up to his feelings, and 



24 



370 EZRA RIPLEY, D. D. 

said on the instant the best things in the world. 
Many and many a felicity he had in his prayer, 
now forever lost, which defied all the rules of all 
the rhetoricians. He did not know when he was 
good in prayer or sermon, for he had no literature 
and no art ; but he believed, and therefore spoke. 
He was eminently loyal in his nature, and not fond 
of adventure or innovation. By education, and still 
more by temperament, he was engaged to the old 
forms of the New England Church. Not specula- 
tive, but affectionate ; devout, but with an extreme 
love of order, he adopted heartily, though in its 
mildest form, the creed and catechism of the fa- 
thers, and appeared a modern Israelite in his attach- 
ment to the Hebrew history and faith. He was a 
man very easy to read, for his whole life and con- 
versation were consistent. All his opinions and 
actions might be securely predicted by a good ob- 
server on short acquaintance. My classmate at 
Cambridge, Frederick King, told me from Gov- 
ernor Gore, who was the Doctor's classmate, that 
in college he was called Holy Kipley. 

And now, in his old age, when all the antique 
Hebraism and its customs are passing away, it is 
fit that he too should depart, — most fit that in the 
fall of laws a loyal man should die. 



MARY MOODY EMERSON. 



The yesterday doth never smile, 
To-day goes drudging through the while, 
Yet in the name of Godhead, I 
The morrow front and can defy ; 

Though I am weak, yet God, when prayed. 

Cannot withhold his conquering aid. 

Ah me I it was my childhood's thought, 

If He should make my web a blot 

On life's fair picture of delight. 

My heart's content would find it right. 

But 0, these waves and leaves, — 

When happy, stoic Nature grieves, — 

No human speech so beautiful 

As their murmurs mine to lull. 

On this altar God hath built 

I lay my vanity and guilt; 

Nor me can Hope or Passion urge, 

Hearing as now the lofty dirge 

Which blasts of Northern mountains hymiffij 

Nature's funeral high and dim, — 

Sable pageantry of clouds. 

Mourning summer laid in shrouds. 

Many a day shall dawn and die, 

Many an angel wander by. 

And passing, light my sunken turf, 

Moist perhaps by ocean surf. 

Forgotten amid splendid tombs. 

Yet wreathed and hid by summer blooms. 

On earth I dream; — I die to be: 

Time! shake not thy bald head at me. 

I challenge thee to hurry past, 

Or for my turn to fly too fast. 



[ Lucy Percy, Countess of Carlisle, the friend of Strafford 
and of Pym, is thus described by Sir Toby Matthews: ] 

" She is of too high a mind and dignity not only to seek, 
but almost to wish, the friendship of any creature. Tliey 
whom she is pleased to choose are such as are of the most 
eminent condition both for power and employment, — not with 
any design towards her own particular, either of advantage 
or curiosity, but her nature values fortunate persons. She 
prefers the conversation of men to that of women; not but 
she can talk on the fashions with her female friends, but she 
is too soon sensible that she can set them as she wills; that 
pre-eminence shortens all equality. She converses with those 
who are most distinguished for their conversational powers. 
Of Love freely will she discourse, listen to all its faults and 
mark its power: and will take h deep ipt«rest for persons of 
celebrity." 



MAEY MOODY EMERSON^ 



I WISH to meet the invitation with which the la- 
dies have honored me by offering them a portrait 
of real life. It is a representative life, such as could 
hardly have appeared out of New England ; of an 
age now past, and of which I think no types sur- 
vive. Perhaps I deceive myself and overestimate 
its interest. It has to me a value like that which 
many readers find in Madame Guyon, in Rahel, in 
Eugenie de Guerin, but it is purely original and 
hardly admits of a duplicate. Then it is a fruit of 
Calvinism and New England, and marks the pre- 
cise time when the power of the old creed yielded 
to the influence of modern science and humanity. 

I have found that I could only bring you this 
portrait by selections from the diary of my heroine, 

1 Aunt of Mr. Emerson, and a potent influence on the lives 
of him and his brothers. This paper was read before the 
"Woman's Club," in Boston, in 1869, under the title 
" Amita," which was also the original superscription of the 
« Nun's Aspiration," in his Poems; a rendermg into verse of 
a passage in Miss Emerson's diary. Part of this poem forms 
the motto of this chapter. 



374 MARY MOODY EMERSON. 

premising a sketch of lier time and place. I report 
some of the thoughts and soliloquies of a country 
girl, poor, solitary, — ' a goody ' as she called her- 
self, — growing from youth to age amid slender 
opportunities and usually very humble company. 

Mary Moody Emerson was born just before the 
outbreak of the Revolution. When introduced to 
Lafayette at Portland, she told him that she was 
"in arms" at the Concord Fight. Her father, 
the minister of Concord, a warm patriot in 1775, 
went as a chaplain to the American army at Ticon- 
deroga : he carried his infant daughter, before he 
went, to his mother in Maiden and told her to keep 
the child until he returned. He died at Rutland, 
Vermont, of army-fever, the next year, and Mary 
remained at Maiden with her grandmother, and, 
after her death, with her father's sister, in whose 
house she grew up, rarely seeing her brothers and 
sisters in Concord. This aunt and her husband 
lived on a farm, were getting old, and the husband 
a shiftless, easy man. There was plenty of work 
for the little niece to do day by day, and not always 
bread enough in the house. 

One of her tasks, it appears, was to watch for the 
approach of the deputy-sheriff, who might come to 
confiscate the spoons or arrest the uncle for debt. 
Later, another aunt, who had become insane, was 
brought hither to end her days. More and saddei 



MARY MOODY EMERSON. 375 

work for this young girl. She had no companions, 
lived in entire solitude with these old people, very 
rarely cheered by short visits from her brothers and 
sisters. Her mother had married again, — mar- 
ried the minister who succeeded her husband in the 
parish at Concord, [Dr. Ezra Ripley,] and had 
now a young family growing up around her. 

Her aunt became strongly attached to Mary, and 
persuaded the family to give the child up to her 
as a daughter, on some terms embracing a care of 
her future interests. She would leave the farm to 
her by will. This promise was kept ; she came into 
possession of the property many years after, and 
her dealings with it gave her no small trouble, 
though they give much piquancy to her letters in 
after years. Finally it was sold, and its price in- 
vested in a share of a farm in Maine, where she 
lived as a boarder with her sister, for many years. 
It was in a picturesque country, within sight of the 
White Mountains, with a little lake in front at the 
foot of a high hill called Bear Mountain. Not far 
from the house was a brook runnins: over a srranite 
floor like the Franconia Flume, and noble forests 
around. Every word she writes about this farm 
(" Elm Vale," Waterford,) her dealings and vexa- 
tions about it, her joys and raptures of religion and 
Nature, interest like a romance, and to those who 
may hereafter read her letters, will make its ob- 
scure acres amiable. 



376 MARY MOODY EMERSON. 

In Maiden she lived through all her youth and 
early womanhood, with the habit of visiting the 
families of her brothers and sisters on any neces- 
sity of theirs. Her good will to serve in time of 
sickness or of pressure was known to them, and 
promptly claimed, and her attachment to the youths 
and maidens growing up in those families was se- 
cure for any trait of talent or of character. Her 
sympathy for young people who pleased her was 
almost passionate, and was sure to make her ar- 
rival in each house a holiday. 

Her early reading was Milton, Young, Akenside, 
Samuel Clarke, Jonathan Edwards, and always the 
Bible. Later, Plato, Plotinus, Marcus Antoninus, 
Stewart, Coleridge, Cousin, Herder, Locke, Ma- 
dame De Stael, Channing, Mackintosh, Byron. No- 
body can read in her manuscript, or recall the con- 
versation of old-school people, without seeing that 
Milton and Young had a religious authority in their 
mind, and nowise the slight, merely entertaining 
quality of modern bards. And Plato, Aristotle, 
Plotinus, — how venerable and organic as Nature 
they are in her mind ! What a subject is her 
mind and life for the finest novel ! When I read 
Dante, the other day, and his paraphrases to sig- 
nify with more adequateness Christ or Jehovah, 
whom do you think I was reminded of? Whom 
but Mary Emerson and her eloquent theology? 



MARY MOODY EMERSON, 377 

She had a deep sympathy with genius. When it 
was unhallowed, as in Byron, she had none the 
less, whilst she deplored and affected to denounce 
him. But she adored it when ennobled by charac- 
ter. She liked to notice that the greatest geniuses 
have died ignorant of their power and influence. 
She wished you to scorn to shine. " My opinion," 
she writes, (is) " that a mind like Byron's would 
never be satisfied with modern Unitarianism, — 
that the fiery depths of Calvinism, its high and 
mysterious elections to eternal bliss, beyond angels, 
and all its attendant wonders would have alone 
been fitted to fix his imagination." 

Her wit was so fertile, and only used to strike, 
that she never used it for display, any more than 
a wasp would parade his sting. It was ever the 
will and not the phrase that concerned her. Yet 
certain expressions, when they marked a memora- 
ble state of mind in her experience, recurred to 
her afterwards, and she would vindicate herself as 

having said to Dr. K or Uncle L so and 

so, at such a period of her life. But they were in- 
tensely true when first spoken. All her language 
was happy, but inimitable, unattainable by talent, 
as if caught from some dream. She calls herself 
" the puny pilgrim, whose sole talent is sympathy." 
" I like that kind of apathy that is a triumph to 
overset." 



378 MARY MOODY EMERSON. 

She writes to her nephew Charles Emerson, in 
1833 : — "I could never have adorned the garden. 
If I had been in aught but dreary deserts, I should 
have idolized my friends, despised the world and 
been haughty. I never expected connections and 
matrimony. My taste was formed in romance, and 
I knew I was not destined to please. I love God 
and his creation as I never else could. I scarcely 
feel the sympathies of this life enough to agitate 
the pool. This in general, one case or so excepted, 
and even this is a relation to God through you. 
'T was so in my happiest early days, when you were 
at my side." 

Destitution is the Muse of her genius, — Destitu- 
tion and Death. I used to propose that her epi- 
taph should be : " Here lies the angel of Death." 
And wonderfully as she varies and poetically re- 
peats that image in every page and day, yet not 
less fondly and sublimely she returns to the other, 
— the grandeur of humility and privation, as thus ; 
" The chief witness which I have had of a Godlike 
principle of action and feeling is in the disinter- 
ested joy felt in others' superiority. For the love 
of superior virtue is mine own gift from God." 
" Where were thine own intellect if others had not 
Hved?" 

She had many acquaintances among the notables 
of the time ; and now and then in her migrations 



MARY MOODY EMERSON. 379 

from town to town in Maine and Massachusetts, in 
search of a new boarding-place, discovered some 
preacher with sense or piety, or both. For on her 
arrival at any new home she was likely to steer 
first to the minister's house and pray his wife to 
take a boarder ; and as the minister found quickly 
that she knew all his books and many more, and 
made shrewd guesses at his character and possibili- 
ties, she would easily rouse his curiosity, as a per- 
son who could read his secret and tell him his for- 
tune. 

She delighted in success, in youth, in beauty, in 
genius, in manners. When she met a young per- 
son who interested her, she made herself acquainted 
and intimate with him or her at once, by sympathy, 
by flattery, by raillery, by anecdotes, by wit, by re- 
buke, and stormed the castle. None but was at- 
tracted or piqued by her interest and wit and wide 
acquaintance with books and with eminent names. 
She said she gave herself full swing in these sud- 
den intimacies, for she knew she should disgust them 
soon, and resolved to have their best hours. " So- 
ciety is shrewd to detect those who do not belong 
to her train, and seldom wastes her attentions." 
She surprised, attracted, chided and denounced her 
companion by turns, and pretty rapid turns. But 
no intelligent youth or maiden could have once met 
her without remembering her with interest, and 



S80 MARY MOODY EMERSON. 

learning something of value. Scorn trifles, lift 
your aims : do what you are afraid to do : sublim- 
ity of character must come from sublimity of mo- 
tive : these were the lessons which were urged with 
vivacity, in ever new language. But if her com- 
panion was dull, her impatience knew no bounds. 
She tired presently of dull conversations, and asked 
to be read to, and so disposed of the visitor. If 
the voice or the reading tired her, she would ask 
the friend if he or she would do an errand for her, 
and so dismiss them. If her companion were a 
little ambitious, and asked her opinions on books 
or matters on which she did not wish rude hands 
laid, she did not hesitate to stop the intruder with 
''How's your cat, Mrs. Tenner?'' 

" I was disappointed," she writes, " in finding 
my little Calvinist no companion, a cold little thing 
who lives in society alone, and is looked up to as a 
specimen of genius. I performed a mission in se- 
cretly undermining his vanity, or trying to. Alas ! 
never done but by mortifying affliction." From the 
country she writes to her sister in town, " You can- 
not help saying that my epistle is a striking speci- 
men of egotism. To which I can only answer that, 
in the country, we converse so much more with 
ourselves, that we are almost led to forget every- 
body else. The very sound of your bells and the 
rattling of the carriages have a tendency to divert 



MARY MOODY EMERSON. 381 

selfishness." " This seems a world rather of trying 
each others' dispositions than of enjoying each 
others' virtues." 

She had the misfortune of spinning with a greater 
velocity than any of the other tops. She would 
tear into the chaise or out of it, into the house or 
out of it, into the conversation, into the thought, 
into the character of the stranger, — disdaining all 
the graduation by which her fellows time their 
steps : and though she might do very happily in a 
planet where others moved with the like velocity, 
she was offended here by the phlegm of all her fel- 
low-creatures, and disgusted them by her impatience. 
She could keep step with no human being. Her 
nephew [R. W. E.] wrote of her : " I am glad the 
friendship with Aunt Mary is ripening. As by 
seeing a high tragedy, reading a true poem, or a 
novel like ' Corinne,' so, by society with her, one's 
mind is electrified and purged. She is no statute- 
book of practical commandments, nor orderly di- 
gest of any system of philosophy, divine or human, 
but a Bible, miscellaneous in its parts, but one in 
its spirit, wherein are sentences of condemnation, 
promises and covenants of love that make foolish 
the wisdom of the world with the power of God." 

Our Delphian was fantastic enough, Heaven 
knows, yet could always be tamed by large and 
sincere conversation. Was there thought and elo- 



382 MARY MOODY EMERSON. 

quence, she would listen like a child. Her aspira- 
tion and prayer would begin, and the whim and 
petulance in which by diseased habit she had grown 
to indulge without suspecting it, was burned up in 
the glow of her pure and poetic spirit, which dearly 
loved the Infinite. 

She writes : " August, 1847 : Vale. — My oddi- 
ties were never designed — effect of an uncalcula- 
ting constitution, at first, then through isolation ; 
and as to dress, from duty. To be singular of 
choice, without singular talents and virtues, is as 
ridiculous as ungrateful." "It is so universal with 
all classes to avoid contact with me that I blame 
none. The fact has generally mcreased piety and 
self-love." " As a traveller enters some fine palace 
and finds all the doors closed, and he only allowed 
the use of some avenues and passages, so have I 
wandered from the cradle over the apartments of 
social affections, or the cabinets of natural or moral 
philosophy, the recesses of ancient and modern 
lore. All say — Forbear to enter the pales of the 
initiated by birth, wealth, talents and patronage. 
I submit with delight, for it is the echo of a decree 
from above ; and from the highway hedges where 
I get lodging, and from the rays which burst forth 
when the crowd are entering these noble saloons, 
whilst I stand in the doors, I get a pleasing vision 
which is an earnest of the interminable skies where 
the mansions are prepared for the poor." 



MARY MOODY EMERSON. 383 

" To live to give pain rather than pleasure (the 
latter so delicious) seems the spider-like necessity 
of my being on earth, and I have gone on my queer 
way with joy, saying, " Shall the clay interrogate?" 
But in every actual case, 'tis hard, and we lose 
sight of the first necessity, — here too amid works 
red with default in all great and grand and infinite 
aims. Yet with intentions disinterested, though 
uncontrolled by proper reverence for others." 

When Mrs. Thoreau called on her one day, 
wearing pink ribbons, she shut her eyes, and so 
conversed with her for a time. By and by she 
said, "Mrs. Thoreau, I don't know whether you 
have observed that my eyes are shut." "Yes, 
Madam, I have observed it." " Perhaps you would 
like to know the reasons ? " " Yes, I should." " I 
don't like to see a person of your age guilty of such 
levity in her dress." 

When her cherished favorite, E. H., was at the 
Vale, and had gone out to walk in the forest with 
Hannah, her niece. Aunt Mary feared they were 
lost, and found a man in the next house and begged 
him to go and look for them. The man went and 
returned saying that he could not find them. " Go 
and cry, ' Elizabeth ! ' " The man rather declined 
this service, as he did not know Miss H. She was 
highly offended, and exclaimed, "God has given 
you a voice that you might use it in the service of 



384 MARY MOODY EMERSON. 

your fellow-creatures. Go instantly and call ' Eliza- 
beth * till you find them." The man went immedi- 
ately, and did as he was bid, and having found 
them apologized for calling thus, by telling what 
Miss Emerson had said to him. 

When some ladies of my acquaintance by an 
unusual chance found themselves in her neighbor- 
hood and visited her, I told them that she was no 
whistle that every mouth coidd play on, but a quite 
clannish instrument, a pibroch, for example, from 
which none but a native Highlander could draw 
music. 

In her solitude of twenty years, with fewest books 
and those only sermons, and a copy of " Paradise 
Lost," without covers or title-page, so that later, 
when she heard much of Milton and sought his 
work, she found it was her very book which she 
knew so well, — she was driven to find Nature her 
companion and solace. She speaks of " her at- 
tempts in Maiden, to wake up the soul amid the 
dreary scenes of monotonous Sabbaths, when Na- 
ture looked like a pulpit." 

" Maiden, November 15th, 1805. — What a rich 
day, so fully occupied in pursuing truth that I 
scorned to touch a novel which for so many years 
I have wanted. How insipid is fiction to a mind 
touched with immortal views ! November 16th. — 
I am so small in my expectations, that a week of 



MARY MOODY EMERSON. 385 

industry delights. Rose before light every morn ; 
visited from necessity once, and again for books ; 
read Butler's Analogy ; commented on the Scrip- 
tures ; read in a little book, — Cicero's Letters, — 
a few : touched Shakspeare, — washed, carded, 
cleaned house, and baked. To-day cannot recall 
an error, nor scarcely a sacrifice, but more fulness 
of content in the labors of a day never was felt. 
There is a sweet pleasure in bending to circum- 
stances while superior to them. 

" Maiden, September, 1807. — The rapture of 
feeling I would part from, for days more devoted 
to higher discipline. But when Nature beams with 
such excess of beauty, when the heart thrills with 
hope in its Author, — feels that it is related to him 
more than by any ties of Creation, — it exults, too 
fondly perhaps for a state of trial. But in dead of 
night, nearer morning, when the eastern stars glow 
or appear to glow with more indescribable lustre, 
a lustre which penetrates the spirit with wonder 
and curiosity, — then, however awed, who can fear? 

Since Sabbath, Aunt B [the insane aunt] was 

brought here. Ah! mortifying sight! instinct per- 
haps triumphs over reason, and every dignified re- 
spect to herself, in her anxiety about recovery, and 
the smallest means connected. Not one wish of 
others detains her, not one care. But it alarms me 
not, 1 shall delight to return to God. His name 

VOL. X. 25 



386 MARY MOODY EMERSON. 

my fullest confidence. His sole presence ineffable 
pleasure. 

" I walked yesterday five or more miles, lost to 
mental or heart existence, through fatigue, — just 
fit for the society I went into, all mildness and the 
most commonplace virtue. The lady is celebrated 
for her cleverness, and she was never so good to 
me. Met a lady in the morning walk, a foreigner, 
— conversed on the accomplishments of Miss T. 
My mind expanded with novel and innocent pleas- 
ure. Ah ! were virtue, and that of dear heavenly 
meekness attached by any necessity to a lower rank 
of genteel people, who would sympathize with the 
exalted with satisfaction ? But that is not the case, 
I believe. A mediocrity does seem to me more 
distant from eminent virtue than the extremes of 
station ; though after all it must depend on the na- 
ture of the heart. A mediocre mind will be de- 
ranged in either extreme of wealth or poverty, praise 
or censure, society or solitude. The feverish lust of 
notice perhaps in all these cases would injure the 
heart of common refinement and virtue." 

Later she writes of her early days in Maiden : 
" When I get a glimpse of the revolutions of na- 
tions — that retribution which seems forever going 
on in this part of creation, — I remember with great 
satisfaction that from all the ills suffered, in child- 
hood and since, from others, I felt that it was rather 



MARY MOODY EMERSON. S87 

the order of things than their individual fault. It 
was from being early impressed by my poor unprac- 
tical aunt, that Providence and Prayer were all in 
all. Poor woman ! Could her own temper in child- 
hood or age have been subdued, how happy for her- 
self, who had a warm heart ; but for me would have 
prevented those early lessons of fortitude, which her 
caprices taught me to practise. Had I prospered 
in life, what a proud, excited being, even to fever- 
ishness, I might have been. Loving to shine, flat- 
tered and flattering, anxious, and wrapped in others, 
frail and feverish as myself." 

She alludes to the early days of her solitude, sixty 
years afterward, on her own farm in Maine, speak- 
ing sadly the thoughts suggested by the rich au- 
tumn landscape around her : " Ah ! as I walked out 
this afternoon, so sad was wearied Nature that I felt 
her whisper to me, ' Even these leaves you use to 
think my better emblems have lost their charm on 
me too, and I weary of my pilgrimage, — tired that 
I must again be clothed in the grandeurs of winter, 
and anon be bedizened in flowers and cascades. 
Oh, if there be a power superior to me, — and that 
there is, my own dread fetters proclaim, — when 
will He let my lights go out, my tides cease to an 
eternal ebb? Oh for transformation! I am not 
infinite, nor have I power or will, but bound and 
imprisoned, the tool of mind, even of the beings I 



MARY MOODY EMERSON. 

feed and adorn. Vital, I feel not : not active, but 
passive, and cannot aid the creatures which seem my 
progeny, — myself. But you are ingrate to tire of 
me, now you want to look beyond. 'T was I who 
soothed your thorny childhood, though you knew me 
not, and you were placed in my most leafless waste. 
Yet I comforted thee when going on the daily er- 
rand, fed thee with my mallows, on the first young 
day of bread failing. More, I led thee when thou 
knewest not a syllable of my active Cause, (any 
more than if it had been dead eternal matter,) to 
that Cause ; and from the solitary heart taught thee 
to say, at first womanhood. Alive with God is 
enough, — 't is rapture.' " 

" This morning rich in existence ; the remem- 
brance of past destitution in the deep poverty of 
my aunt, and her most unhappy temper; of bit- 
terer days of youth and age, when my senses and 
understanding seemed but means of labor, or to 
learn my own unpopular destiny, and that — but no 
more ; — joy, hope and resignation unite me to Him 
whose mysterious Will adjusts everything, and the 
darkest and lightest are alike welcome. Oh ! could 
this state of mind continue, death would not be 
longed for." " I felt, till above twenty years old, 
as though Christianity were as necessary to the 
world as existence ; — was ignorant that it was 
lately promulged, or partially received." Later; 



MARY MOODY EMERSON. 889 

** Could I have those hours in which in fresh youth 
I said, To obey God is joy, though there were no 
hereafter, I should rejoice, though returning to 
dust." 

" Folly follows me as the shadow does the form. 
Yet my whole life devoted to find some new truth 
which will link me closer to God. And the simple 
principle which made me say, in youth and laborious 
poverty, that, should He make me a blot on the fair 
face of his Creation, I should rejoice in His will, 
has never been equalled, though it returns in the 
long life of destitution like an Angel. I end days 
of fine health and cheerfulness without getting up- 
ward now. How did I use to think them lost ! If 
more liberal views of the divine government make 
me think nothing lost which carries me to His now 
hidden presence, there may be danger of losing and 
causing others the loss of that awe and sobriety so 
indispensable." 

She was addressed and offered marriage by a 
man of talents, education and good social position, 
whom she respected. The proposal gave her pause 
and much to think, but after consideration she re- 
fused it, I know not on what grounds : but a few 
allusions to it in her diary suggest that it was a re- 
ligious act, and it is easy to see that she could 
hardly promise herself sympathy in her religious 
abandonment with any but a rarely-found partner. 



390 MARY MOODY EMEESON. 

*' 1807. Jan. 19, Maiden [alluding to the sale 
of lier farm]. Last night I spoke two sentences 
about that foolish place, which I most bitterly la- 
ment, — not because they were improper, but they 
arose from anger. It is difficult, when we have no 
kind of barrier, to command our feelings. But this 
shall teach me. It humbles me beyond anything 
I have met, to find myself for a moment affected 
with hope, fear, or especially anger, about interest. 
But I. did overcome and return kindness for the 
repeated provocations. What is it ? My uncle 
has been the means of lessening my property. Ri- 
diculous to wound him for that. He was honestly 
seeking his own. But at last, this very night, the 
bargain is closed, and I am delighted with my- 
self : — my dear self has done well. Never did I 
so exult in a trifle. Happy beginning of my bar- 
gain, though the sale of the place appears to me 
one of the worst things for me at this time." 

" Jan. 21. Weary at times of objects so tedious 
to hear and see. O the power of vision, then the 
delicate power of the nerve which receives impres- 
sions from sounds ! If ever I am blest with a social 
life, let the accent be grateful. Could I at times 
be regaled with music, it would remind me that 
there are sounds. Shut up in this severe weather 
with careful, infirm, afflicted age, it is wonderful, 
my spirits : hopes I can have none. Not a pros* 



MARY MOODY EMERSON. 391 

pect but is dark on earth, as to knowledge and joy 
from externals: but the prospect of a dying bed 
reflects lustre on all the rest. 

"The evening is fine, but I dare not enjoy it. 
The moon and stars reproach me, because I had to 
do with mean fools. Should I take so much care to 
save a few dollars ? Never was I so much ashamed. 
Did I say with what rapture I might dispose of 
them to the poor ? Pho ! self-preservation, dignity, 
confidence in the future, contempt of trifles ! Alas, 
I am disgraced. Took a momentary revenge on 
for worrying me." 

" Jan. 30. I walked to Captain Dexter's. Sick. 
Promised never to put that ring on. Ended mis- 
erably the month which began so worldly. 

" It was the choice of the Eternal that gave the 
glowing seraph his joys, and to me my vile im- 
prisonment. I adore Him. It was His will that 
gives my superiors to shine in wisdom, friendship, 
and ardent pursuits, while I pass my youth, its last 
traces, in the veriest shades of ignorance and com- 
plete destitution of society. I praise Him, though 
when my strength of body falters, it is a trial not 
easily described." 

" True, I must finger the very farthing candle- 
ends, — the duty assigned to my pride ; and indeed 
so poor are some of those allotted to join me on the 
weary needy path, that 't is benevolence enjoins self- 



392 MARY MOODY EMERSON. 

denial. Could I but dare it in the bread-and-water 
diet ! Could I but live free from calculation, as in 
the first half of life, when my poor aunt lived. I 
had ten dollars a year for clothes and charity, and 
I never remember to have been needy, though I 
never had but two or three aids in those six years 
of earning my home. That ten dollars my dear 
father earned, and one hundred dollars remain, and 
I can't bear to take it, and don't know what to do. 

Yet I would not breathe to or my want. 

'T is only now that I would not let pay my 

hotel-bill. They have enough to do. Besides, it 
would send me packing to depend for anything. 
Better anything than dishonest dependence, which 
robs the poorer, and despoils friendship of equal 
connection." 

In 1830, in one of her distant homes, she re- 
proaches herself with some sudden passion she has 
for visiting her old home and friends in the city, 
where she had lived for a while with her brother 
[Mr. Emerson's father] and afterwards with his 
widow. " Do I yearn to be in Boston ? 'T would 
fatigue, disappoint ; I, who have so long despised 
means, who have always found it a sort of rebellion 
to seek them? Yet the old desire for the worm is 
not so greedy as [mine] to find myself in my old 
haunts." 

1833. "The difficulty of getting places of lov; 



MARY MOODY EMERSON. 393 

board for a lady, is obvious. And, at moments, I 
am tired out. Yet how independent, how better 
than to hang on friends ! And sometimes I fancy- 
that I am emptied and peeled to carry some seed 
to the ignorant, which no idler wind can so well 
dispense." " Hard to contend for a health which 
is daily used in petition for a final close." " Am 
I, poor victim, swept on through the sternest ordi- 
nations of nature's laws which slay ? yet I '11 trust." 
" There was great truth in what a pious enthusiast 
said, that, if God should cast him into hell, he 
would yet clasp his hands around Him." 

" Newburyport, Sept. 1822. High, solemn, en- 
trancing noon, prophetic of the approach of the 
Presiding Spirit of Autumn. God preserve my 
reason ! Alone, feeling strongly, fully, that I have 
deserved nothing ; according to Adam Smith's 
idea of society, ' done nothing ; ' doing nothing, 
never expect to ; yet joying in existence, perhaps 
striving to beautify one individual of God's crea- 
tion. 

" Our civilization is not always mending our poe- 
try. It is sauced and spiced with our complexity 
of arts and inventions, but lacks somewhat of the 
grandeur that belongs to a Doric and unphilosophi- 
cal age. In a religious contemplative public it 
would have less outward variety, but simpler and 
grander means ; a few pidsations of created beings, 



394 MARY MOODY EMERSON. 

a few successions of acts, a few lamps held out in 
the firmament enable us to talk of Time, make 
epochs, write histories, — to do more, — to date 
the revelations of God to man. But these lamps 
are held to measure out some of the moments of 
eternity, to divide the history of God's operations 
in the birth and death of nations, of worlds. It is 
a goodly name for our notions of breathing, suffer- 
ing, enjoying, acting. We personify it. We call 
it by every name of fleeting, dreaming, vaporing 
imagery. Yet it is nothing. We exist in eternity. 
Dissolve the body and the night is gone, the stars 
are extinguished, and we measure duration by the 
number of our thoughts, by the activity of reason, 
the discovery of truths, the acquirement of virtue, 
the approach to God. And the gray-headed god 
throws his shadows all around, and his slaves catch, 
now at this, now at that, one at the halo he throws 
around poetry, or pebbles, bugs, or bubbles. Some- 
times they climb, sometimes creep into the meanest 
holes — but they are all alike in vanishing, like 
the shadow of a cloud." 

To her nephew Charles : " War ; what do I 
think of it ? Why in your ear I think it so much 
better than oppression that if it were ravaging the 
whole geography of despotism it would be an 
omen of high and glorious import. Chauning 
paints its miseries, but does he know those of a 



MARY MOODY EMERSON. 395 

worse war, — private animosities, pinching, bitter 
warfare of the human heart, the cruel oppression of 
the poor by the rich, which corrupts old worlds ? 
How much better, more honest, are storming and 
conflagration of towns ! They are but letting 
blood which corrupts into worms and dragons. A 
war-trimip would be harmony to the jars of theolo- 
gians and statesmen such as the papers bring. It 
was the glory of the Chosen People, nay, it is said 
there was war in Heaven. War is among the 
means of discipline, the rough meliorators, and no 
worse than the strife with poverty, malice and igno- 
rance. War devastates the conscience of men, yet 
corrupt peace does not less. And if you teU me of 
the miseries of the battle-field, with the sensitive 
Channing, (of whose love of life I am ashamed), 
what of a few days of agony, what of a vulture be- 
ing the bier, tomb and parson of a hero, compared 
to the long years of sticking on a bed and wished 
away ? For the widows and orphans — Oh, I could 
give facts of the long-drawn years of imprisoned 
minds and hearts, which uneducated orphans en- 
dure ! 

" O Time ! Thou loiterer. Thou, whose might 
has laid low the vastest and crushed the worm, 
restest on thy hoary throne, with like potency over 
thy agitations and thy graves. When will thy 
routines give way to higher and lasting institu- 



396 MARY MOODY EMERSON. 

tions ? When thy trophies and thy name and all 
its wizard forms be lost in the Genius of Eternity ? 
In Eternity, no deceitful promises, no fantastic 
illusions, no riddles concealed by thy shrouds, none 
of thy Arachnean webs, which decoy and destroy. 
Hasten to finish thy motley work, on which fright- 
ful Gorgons are at play, spite of holy ghosts. 'T is 
already moth-eaten and its shuttles quaver, as the 
beams of the loom are shaken. 

"Sat. 25. Hail requiem of departed Time* 
Never was incumbent's funeral followed by expect- 
ant heir with more satisfaction. Yet not his hope 
is mine. For in the weary womb are prolific num- 
bers of the same sad hour, colored by the memory 
of defeats in virtue, by the prophecy of others, 
more dreary, blind and sickly. Yet He who formed 
thy web, who stretched thy warp from long ages, 
has graciously given man to throw his shuttle, or 
feel he does, and irradiate the filling woof with 
many a flowery rainbow, — labors, rather — evan- 
escent efforts, which will wear like flowerets in 
brighter soils ; — has attuned his mind in such uni- 
son with the harp of the universe, that he is never 
without some chord of hope's music. 'T is not in 
the nature of existence, while there is a God, to be 
without the pale of excitement. When the dreamy 
pages of life seem all turned and folded down to 
very weariness, even this idea of those who fill the 



MARY MOODY EMERSON. 397 

hour with crowded virtues, lifts the spectator to 
other worlds, and he adores the eternal purposes of 
Him who lifteth up and casteth down, bringeth to 
dust, and raiseth to the skies. 'T is a strange defic- 
iency in Brougham's title of a System of Natural 
Theology, when the moral constitution of the be- 
ing for whom these contrivances were made is not 
recognized. The v/onderf ul inhabitant of the build- 
ing to which unknown ages were the mechanics, is 
left out as to that part where the Creator had put 
his own lighted candle, placed a vice-gerent. Not 
to complain of the poor old earth's chaotic state, 
brought so near in its long and gloomy transmut- 
ings by the geologist. Yet its youthful charms as 
decked by the hand of Moses' Cosmogony, will lin- 
ger about the heart, while Poetry succumbs to 
Science. Yet there is a sombre music in the whirl 
of times so long gone by. And the bare bones of 
this poor embryo earth may give the idea of the In- 
finite far, far better than when dignified with arts 
and industry : — its oceans, when beating the sym- 
bols of ceaseless ages, than when covered with car- 
goes of war and oppression. How grand its prep- 
aration for souls, — souls who were to feel the 
Divinity, before Science had dissected the emotions, 
and applied its steely analysis to that state of be- 
ing which recognizes neither psychology nor ele- 
ment. 



MARY MOODY EMERSON. 

"September, 1836. Vale. The mystic dream 
which is shed over the season. O, to dream more 
deeply ; to lose external objects a little more ! Yet 
the hold on them is so slight, that duty is lost sight 
of perhaps, at times. Sadness is better than walk- 
ing talking acting somnambulism. Yes, this en- 
tire solitude with the Being who makes the powers 
of life ! Even Fame, which lives in other states of 
Virtue, palls. Usefulness, if it requires action, 
seems less like existence than the desire of being 
absorbed in God, retaining consciousness. Num- 
ber the waste-places of the journey, — the secret 
martyrdom of youth, heavier than the stake, I 
thought, the narrow limits which know no outlet, 
the bitter dregs of the cup, — and all are sweetened 
by the purpose of Him I love. The idea of being 
no mate for those intellectualists I 've loved to ad- 
mire, is no pain. Hereafter the same solitary joy 
will go with me, were I not to live, as I expect, in 
the vision of the Infinite. Never do the feelings 
of the Infinite, and the consciousness of finite 
frailty and ignorance, harmonize so well as at this 
mystic season in the deserts of life. Contradic- 
tions, the modern German says, of the Infinite and 
finite." 

I sometimes fancy I detect in her writings, a 
certain — shall I say — polite and courtly homage 
to the name and dignity of Jesus, not at all spon- 



MARY MOODY EMERSON. 399 

taneous, but growing out of her respect to the Rer- 
elation, and really veiling and betraying her or- 
ganic dislike to any interference, any mediation 
between her and the Author of her being, assur- 
ance of whose direct dealing with her she inces- 
santly invokes : for example, the parenthesis " Sav- 
ing thy presence. Priest and Medium of all this 
approach for a sinful creature ! " " Were it possi- 
ble that the Creator was not virtually present with 
the spirits and bodies which He has made: — if 
it were in the nature of things possible He could 
withdraw himself, — I would hold on to the faith, 
that, at some moment of His existence, I was pres- 
ent : that, though cast from Him, my sorrows, my 
ignorance and meanness were a part of His plan ; 
my death, too, however long and tediously delayed 
to prayer, — was decreed, was fixed. Oh how 
weary in youth — more so scarcely now, not when- 
ever I can breathe, as it seems, the atmosphere of 
the Omnipresence : then I ask not faith nor knowl- 
edge; honors, pleasures, labors, I always refuse, 
compared to this divine partaking of existence; — 
but how rare, how dependent on the organs through 
which the soul operates ! 

The sickness of the last week was fine medicine ; 
pain disintegi-ated the spirit, or became spiritual. 
I rose, — I felt that I had given to God more per- 
haps than an angel could, — had promised Him 



400 MARY MOODY EMERSON. 

in youth that to be a blot on this fair world, at His 
command, would be acceptable. Constantly offer 
myself to continue the obscurest and loneliest thing 
ever heard of, with one proviso, — His agency. 
Yes, love Thee, and all Thou dost, while Thou 
sheddest frost and darkness on every path of 
mine." 

For years she had her bed made in the form of 
a coffin ; and delighted herself with the discovery 
of the figure of a coffin made every evening on 
their sidewalk, by the shadow of a church tower 
which adjoined the house. 

Saladin caused his shroud to be made, and car- 
ried it to battle as his standard. She made up her 
shroud, and death still refusing to come, and she 
thinking it a pity to let it lie idle, wore it as a 
night-gown, or a day-gown, nay, went out to ride 
in it, on horseback, in her mountain roads, until it 
was worn out. Then she had another made up, 
and as she never travelled without being provided 
for this dear and indispensable contingency, I be- 
lieve she wore out a great many. 

" 1833. I have given up, the last year or two, 
the hope of dying. In the lowest ebb of health 
nothing is ominous ; diet and exercise restore. So 
it seems best to get that very humbling business of 
insurance. I enter my dear sixty the last of this 
month." "1835, June 16. Tedious indisposition; 



MARY MOODY EMERSON. 401 

^ hoped, as it took a new form, it would open the 
cool, sweet grave. Now existence itself in any 
form is sweet. Away with knowledge ; — God 
alone. He communicates this our condition and 
humble waiting, or I should never perceive Him. 
Science, Nature, — O, I've yearned to open some 
page; — not now, too late. Ill health and nerves. 
O dear worms, — how they will at some sure time 
take down this tedious tabernacle, most valuable 
companions, instructors in the science of mind, by 
gnawing away the meshes which have chained it. 
A very Beatrice in showing the Paradise. Yes, I 
irk under contact with forms of depravity, while I 
am resigned to being nothing, never expect a palm, 
a laurel, hereafter." 

" 1826, July. If one could choose, and without 
crime be gibbeted, — were it not altogether better 
than the long drooping away by age without men- 
tality or devotion ? The vulture and crow would 
caw caw, and, unconscious of any deformity in the 
mutilated body, would relish their meal, make no 
grimace of affected sympathy, nor suffer any real 
compassion. I pray to die, though happier myr- 
iads and mine own companions press nearer to 
the throne. His coldest beam will purify and ren- 
der me forever holy. Had I the highest place of 
acquisition and diffusing virtue here, the principle 
of human sympathy would be too strong for that 

VOL. X. 26 



402 MARY MOODY EMERSON. 

rapt emotion, that severe delight which I crave ; 
nay for that kind of obscure virtue which is so rich 
to lay at the feet of the Author of morality. Those 
economists (Adam Smith) who say nothing is 
added to the wealth of a nation but what is dug 
out of the earth, and that, whatever disposition of 
virtue may exist, unless something is done for so- 
ciety, deserves no fame, — why I am content with 
such paradoxical kind of facts ; but one secret 
sentiment of virtue, disinterested (or perhaps not), 
is worthy, and will tell, in the world of spirits, of 
God's immediate presence, more than the blood of 
many a martyr who has it not." " I have heard 
that the greatest geniuses have died ignorant of 
their power and influence on the arts and sciences. 
I believe thus much, that their large perception 
consumed their egotism, or made it impossible for 
them to make small calculations." 

"That greatest of all gifts, however small my 
power of receiving, — the capacity, the element to 
love the All-perfect, without regard to personal 
happiness : — happiness ? — 't is itself." She checks 
herself amid her passionate prayers for immediate 
communion with God ; — "I who never made a 
sacrifice to record, — I cowering in the nest of 
quiet for so many years ; — I indulge the delight 
of sympathizing with great virtues, — blessing their 
Original : Have I this right ? " " While I am 



MARY MOODY EMERSON. 403 

sympathizing in the government of God over the 
world, perhaps I lose nearer views. Well, I 
learned his existence a priori. No object of sci- 
ence or observation ever was pointed out to me by 
my poor aunt, but His Being and commands ; and 
oh how much I trusted Him with every event till 
I learned the order of human events from the pres- 
sure of wants." 

" What a timid, ungrateful creature ! Fear the 
deepest pit-falls of age, when pressing on, in imag- 
ination at least, to Him with whom a day is a thou- 
sand years, — with whom all miseries and irregu- 
larities are conforming to universal good ! Shame 
on me who have learned within three years to sit 
whole days in peace and enjoyment without the 
least apparent benefit to any, or knowledge to my- 
self ; — resigned, too, to the memory of long years 
of slavery passed in labor and ignorance, to the 
loss of that character which I once thought and 
felt so sure of, without ever being conscious of act- 
ing from calculation." 

Her friends used to say to her, " I wish you joy 
of the worm." And when at last her release ar- 
rived, the event of her death had really such a 
comic tinge in the eyes of every one who knew her, 
that her friends feared they might, at her funeral, 
not dare to look at each other, lest they should for- 
get the serious proprieties of the hour. 



404 MARY MOODY EMERSON. 

She gave high counsels. It was the privilege of 
certain boys to have this immeasurably high stand- 
ard indicated to their childhood ; a blessing which 
nothing else in education could supply. It is frivo- 
lous to ask, — " And was she ever a Christian in 
practice ? " Cassandra uttered, to a frivolous, skep- 
tical time, the arcana of the Gods : but it is easy 
to believe that Cassandra domesticated in a lady's 
house would have proved a troublesome boarder. 
Is it the less desirable to have the lofty abstractions 
because the abstractionist is nervous and irritable? 
Shall we not keep Flamsteed and Herschel in the 
observatory, though it should even be proved that 
they neglected to rectify their own kitchen clock? 
It is essential to the safety of every mackerel fisher 
that latitudes and longitudes should be astronomi- 
cally ascertained ; and so every banker, shopkeeper 
and wood-sawyer has a stake in the elevation of 
the moral code by saint and prophet. Very rightly, 
then, the Christian ages, proceeding on a grand in- 
stinct, have said: Faith alone. Faith alone. 



SAMUEL HOAR. 

" Magno se judice qiiisqiie tuetur ; 
Victrix causa dels placuit sed victa CatonL 



A YEAR ago, how often did we meet 

Beneath these elms, once more in sober bloom, 
Thy tall, sad figure pacing down the street. 

And now the robin sings above thy tomb ! 
Thy name on other shores may ne'er be known, 

Though Rome austere no graver consul knew, 
But Massachusetts her true son shall own ; 

Out of her soil thy hardy virtues grew. 
She loves the man that chose the conquered cause. 

With upright soul that bowed to God alone ; 
The clean hands that upheld her equal laws, 

The old religion ne'er to be outgrown ; 
The cold demeanor, the warm heart beneath, 
The simple grandeur of thy life and death. 

F. B. Sanborn. 
.\pril, 1857. 



8AMUEL HOAR. 



Here is a day on which more public good or evil 
is to be done than was ever done on any day. And 
this is the pregnant season, when our old Roman, 
Samuel Hoar, has chosen to quit this world. Ab 
iniquo certamine indignahundus recessit. 

He was born under a Christian and humane star, 
full of mansuetude and nobleness, honor and char- 
ity ; and, whilst he was willing to face every dis- 
agreeable duty, whilst he dared to do all that might 
beseem a man, his self-respect restrained him from 
any foolhardiness. The Homeric heroes, when they 
saw the gods mingling in the fray, sheathed their 
Bwords. So did not he feel any call to make it 
a contest of personal strength with mobs or na- 
tions ; but when he saw the day and the gods went 
against him, he withdrew, but with an unaltered 
belief. All was conquered prceter atrocem anir 
mum Catonls, 

At the time when he went to South Carolina as 

* Written on the 4th Nov., 1856, the day when Mr. Bu- 
chanan was chosen President of the United States. Re- 
printed from Putnam's Magazine. 



408 SAMUEL HOAR, 

the Commissioner of Massachusetts, in 1844, whilst 
staying in Charleston, pending his correspondence 
with the governor and the legal officers, he was re- 
peatedly warned that it was not safe for him to ap- 
pear in public, or to take his daily walk, as he had 
done, unattended by his friends, in the streets of 
the city. He was advised to withdraw to private 
lodgings, which were eagerly offered him by friends. 
He rejected the ad™e, and refused the offers, say- 
ing that he was old, and his life was not worth 
much, but he had rather the boys should troll his 
old head like a foot-ball in their streets, than that 
he should hide it. And he continued the uniform 
practice of his daily walk into all parts of the city. 
But when the mob of Charleston was assembled in 
the streets before his hotel, and a deputation of 
gentlemen waited upon him in the hall to say they 
had come with the unanimous voice of the State to 
remove him by force, and the carriage was at the 
door, he considered his duty discharged to the last 
point of possibility. The force was apparent and 
irresistible ; the legal officer's part was up ; it was 
now time for the military officer to be sent ; and he 
said, " Well, gentlemen, since it is your pleasure to 
use force, I must go." But his opinion was un- 
changed. 

In like manner now, when the votes of the Free 
States, as shown in the recent election in the State 



SAMUEL HOAR. 409 

of Pennsylvania, had disappointed the hopes of 
mankind and betrayed the cause of freedom, he 
considered the question of justice and liberty, for 
his age, lost, and had no longer the will to drag his 
days through the dishonors of the long defeat, and 
promptly withdrew, but with unaltered belief. 

He was a very natural, but a very high character ; 
a man of simple tastes, plain and true in speech, 
with a clear perception of justice, and a perfect 
obedience thereto in his action ; of a strong under- 
standing, precise and methodical, which gave him 
great eminence in the legal profession. It was 
rather his reputation for severe method in his intel- 
lect than any special direction in his studies that 
caused him to be offered the mathematical chair in 
Harvard University, when vacant in 1806. The 
severity of his logic might have inspired fear, had it 
not been restrained by his natural reverence, which 
made him modest and courteous, though his court- 
esy had a grave and almost military air. He com- 
bined a uniform self-respect with a natural rever- 
ence for every other man ; so that it was perfectly 
easy for him to associate with farmers, and with 
plain, uneducated, poor men, and he had a strong, 
unaffected interest in farms, and crops, and weath- 
ers, and the common incidents of rural life. It was 
just as easy for him to meet on the same floor, and 
with the same plain courtesy, men of distinction 



410 SAMUEL HOAR. 

and large ability. He was fond of farms and trees, 
fond of birds, and attentive to their manners and 
habits ; addicted to long and retired walks ; temper- 
ate to asceticism, for no lesson of his experience 
was lost on him, and his self-command was perfect. 
Though rich, of a plainness and almost poverty of 
personal expenditure, yet liberal of his money to 
any worthy use, readily lending it to young men, 
and industrious men, and by no means eager to re- 
claim of them either the interest or the principal. 
He was open-handed to every charity, and every 
public claim that had any show of reason in it. 
When I talked with him one day of some inequal- 
ity of taxes in the town, he said it was his practice 
to pay whatever was demanded ; for, though he 
might think the taxation large and very unequally 
proportioned, yet he thought the money might as 
well go in this way as in any other. 

The strength and the beauty of the man lay in 
the natural goodness and justice of his mind, which, 
in manhood and in old age, after dealing all his life 
with weighty private and public interests, left an 
infantile innocence, of which we have no second or 
third example, — the strength of a chief united to 
the modesty of a child. He returned from courts 
or congresses to sit down, with unaltered humility, 
in the church or in the town-house, on the plain 
wooden bench where honor came and sat down 
beside him. 



SAMUEL HOAR. 411 

He was a man in whom so rare a spirit of justice 
visibly dwelt, that if one had met him in a cabin or 
in a forest he must still seem a public man, answer- 
ing as sovereign state to sovereign state ; and might 
easily suggest Milton's picture of John Bradshaw, 
that " he was a consul from whom the fasces did 
not depart with the year, but in private seemed 
ever sitting in judgment on kings." Everybody 
knew where to find him. What he said, that would 
he do. But he disdained any arts in his speech : 
he was not adorned with any graces of rhetoric, 

"But simple truth his utmost skill." 

So cautious was he, and tender of the truth, that he 
sometimes wearied his audience with the pains he 
took to qualify and verify his statements, adding 
clause on clause to do justice to all his conviction. 
He had little or no power of generalization. But 
a plain way he had of putting his statement with 
all his might, and now and then borrowing the aid 
of a good story, or a farmer's phrase, whose force 
had imprinted it on his memory, and, by the same 
token, his hearers were bound to remember his 
point. 

The impression he made on juries was honorable 
to him and them. For a long term of years, he 
was at the head of the bar in Middlesex, practising, 
also, in the adjoining counties. He had one side 



412 SAMUEL HOAR. 

or the other of every important case, and his influ- 
ence was reckoned despotic, and sometimes com- 
plained of as a bar to public justice. Many good 
stories are still told of the perplexity of jurors who 
found the law and the evidence on one side, and yet 
Squire Hoar had said that he believed, on his con- 
science, his client entitled to a verdict. And what 
Middlesex jury, containing any God-fearing men 
in it, would hazard an opinion in flat contradiction 
to what Squire Hoar believed to be just ? He was 
entitled to this respect ; for he discriminated in the 
business that was brought to him, and would not 
argue a rotten cause; and he refused very large 
sums offered him to undertake the defense of crim- 
inal persons. 

His character made him the conscience of the 
community in which he lived. And in many a 
town it was asked, " What does Squire Hoar think 
of this ? " and in political crises, he was entreated 
to write a few lines to make known to good men in 
Chelmsford, or Marlborough, or Shirley, what that 
opinion was. I used to feel that his conscience 
was a kind of meter of the degree of honesty in the 
country, by which on each occasion it was tried, 
and sometimes found wanting. I am sorry to say 
he could not be elected to Congress a second time 
from Middlesex. 

And in his own town, if some important end was 



SAMUEL HOAR. 413 

to be gained, — as, for instance, when the county 
commissioners refused to rebuild the burned court- 
house, on the belief that the courts would be trans- 
ferred from Concord to Lowell, — all parties com- 
bined to send Mr. Hoar to the Legislature, where 
his presence and speech, of course, secured the re- 
building ; and, of course also, having answered our 
end, we passed him by and elected somebody else 
at the next term. 

His head, with singular grace in its lines, had a 
resemblance to the bust of Dante. He retained to 
the last the erectness of his tall but slender form, 
and not less the full strength of his mind. Such 
was, in old age, the beauty of his person and car- 
riage, as if the mind radiated, and made the same 
impression of probity on all beholders. His beauty 
was pathetic and touching in these latest days, and, 
as now appears, it awakened a certain tender fear 
in all who saw him, that the costly ornament of our 
homes and halls and streets was speedily to be re- 
moved. Yet how solitary he looked, day by day in 
the world, this man so revered, this man of public 
life, of large acquaintance and wide family connec- 
tion ! Was it some reserve of constitution, or was 
it only the lot of excellence, that with aims so pure 
and single, he seemed to pass out of life alone, and, 
as it were, unknown to those who were his contemn 
poraries and familiars? 



414 SAMUEL HOAR. 

[The following sketch of Mr. Hoar from a slightly 
different point of view, was prepared by Mr. Em- 
erson, shortly after the above paper appeared in 
"Putnam's Magazine" (December, 1856), at the 
request of the Editor of the "Monthly Religious 
Magazine," and was printed there, January, 1857. 
It is here appended as giving some additional 
traits of a characteristic figure which may serve as 
a pendant in some respects to that of Dr. Eipley.] 

Mr. Hoar was distinguished in his profession by the 
grasp of his mind, and by the simplicity of his means. 
His ability lay in the clear apprehension and the power- 
ful statement of the material points of his case. He soon 
possessed it, and he never possessed it better, and he was 
equally ready at any moment to state the facts. He saw 
what was essential and refuted whatever was not, so that 
no man embarrassed himself less with a needless array 
of books and evidences of contingent value. 

These tactics of the lawyer were the tactics of his life. 
He had uniformly the air of knowing just what he wanted 
and of going to that in the shortest way. It is singular 
that his character should make so deep an impression, 
standing and working as he did on so common a ground. 
He was neither spiritualist nor man of genius nor of a 
Hterary nor an executive talent. In strictness the vigor 
of his understanding was directed on the ordinary do- 
mestic and municipal well-being. Society had reason to 
cherish him, for he was a main pillar on which it leaned. 
The useful and practical super-abounded in his mind, and 



SAMUEL HOAR. 415 

to a degree which might be even comic to young and 
poetical persons. If he spoke of the engagement of two 
lovers, he called it a contract. Nobody cared to speak 
of thoughts or aspirations to a black-letter lawyer, who 
only studied to keep men out of prison, and their lands 
out of attachment. Had you read Swedenborg or Plo- 
tinus to him, he would have waited till you had done, 
and answered you out of the Revised Statutes. He had 
an affinity for mathematics, but it was a taste rather than 
a pursuit, and of the modern sciences he liked to read 
popular books on geology. Yet so entirely was this re- 
spect to the ground plan and substructure of society a 
natural ability, and from the order of his mind, and not 
for "tickling commodity," that it was admirable, as 
every work of nature is, and like one of those opaque 
crystals, big beryls weighing tons, which are found in 
Acworth, New Hampshire, not less perfect in their angles 
and structure, and only less beautiful, than the transpar- 
ent topazes and diamonds. Meantime, whilst his talent 
and his profession led him to guard the material wealth 
of society, a more disinterested person did not exist. 
And if there were regions of knowledge not open to him, 
he did not pretend to them. His modesty was sincere. 
He had a childlike innocence and a native temperance, 
which left him no temptations, and enabled him to meet 
every comer with a free and disengaged courtesy that 
had no memory in it 

" Of wrong and outrage with which earth is filled." 
No person was more keenly alive to the stabs which the 



416 SAMUEL HOAR. 

ambition and avarice of men inflicted on the common- 
wealth. Yet when politicians or speculators approached 
him, these memories left no scar ; his countenance had 
an unalterable tranquillity and sweetness ; he had noth- 
ing to repent of, — let the cloud rest where it niight, he 
dwelt in eternal sunshine. 

He had his birth and breeding in a little country town, 
where the old religion existed in strictness, and spent all 
his energy in creating purity of manners and careful ed- 
ucation. No art or practice of the farm was unknown 
to him, and the farmers greeted him as one of them- 
selves, whilst thoy paid due homage to his powers of 
mind and to his virtues. 

He loved the dogmas and the simple usages of his 
church; was always an honored and sometimes an ac- 
tive member. He never shrunk from a disagreeable 
duty. In the time of the Sunday laws he was a tithing- 
man ; under the Maine Law he was a prosecutor of the 
liquor dealers. It seemed as if the New England church 
had formed him to be its friend and defender ; the lover 
and assured friend of its parish by-laws, of its ministers, 
its rites, and its social reforms. He was a model of 
those formal but reverend manners which make what is 
called a gentleman of the old school, so called under an 
impression that the style is passing away, but which, I 
suppose, is an optical illusion, as there are always a few 
more of the class remaining, and always a few young 
men to whom these manners are native. 

I have spoken of his modesty ; he had nothing to say 
about himself ; and his sincere admiration was com* 



SAMUEL HOAR, 417 

manded by certain heroes of the profession, like Judge 
Parsons and Judge Marshall, Mr. Mason and Mr. Web- 
ster. When some one said, in his presence, that Chief 
Justice Marshall was failing in his intellect, Mr. Hoar 
remarked that "Judge Marshall could afford to lose 
brains enough to furnish three or four common men, be- 
fore common men would find it out." He had a huge re- 
spect for Mr. Webster's ability, with whom he had often 
occasion to try his strength at the bar, and a proportion- 
ately deep regret at Mr. Webster's political course in his 
later years. 

There was no elegance in his reading or tastes beyond 
the crystal clearness of his mind. He had no love of 
poetry ; and I have heard that the only verse that he 
was ever known to quote was the Indian rule : 

" When the oaks are in the gray, 
Then, farmers, plant away." 

But I find an elegance in his quiet but firm withdrawal 
from all business in the courts which he could drop 
without manifest detriment to the interests involved 
(and this when in his best strength), and his self-dedica- 
tion thenceforward to unpaid services of the Temperance 
and Peace and other philanthropic societies, the Sunday 
Schools, the cause of Education, and specially of the 
University, and to such political activities as a strong 
sense of duty and the love of order and of freedom urged 
him to forward. 

Perfect in his private life, the husband, father, friend, 
he was severe only with himself. He was as if on terms 

VOL. X. 27 



418 SAMUEL HO4R. 

of honor with those nearest him, nor did he think a life- 
long familiarity could excuse any omission of courtesy 
from him. He carried ceremony finely to the last. But 
his heart was all gentleness, gratitude and bounty. 

With beams December planets dart, 
His cold eye truth and conduct scanned ; 
July was in his sunny heart, 
October in his Hberal hand. 



THOREAU. 



A QUEEN rejoices in her peers, 
And wary Nature knows her own, 
By court and city, dale and down, 
And like a lover volunteers. 
And to her son will treasures more, 
And more to purpose, freely pour 
In one wood walk, than learned men 
Will find with glass in ten times ten. 



It seemed as if the breezes brought hinij 
It seemed as if the sparrows taught him, 
As if by secret sign he knew 
Where in far fields the orchis grew. 



THOEEAU.* 



Henry David Thoreau was the last male de- 
scendant of a French ancestor who came to this 
country from the Isle of Guernsey. His character 
exhibited occasional traits drawn from this blood, 
in singular combination with a very strong Saxon 
genius. 

He was bom in Concord, Massachusetts, on the 
12th of Jidy, 1817. He was graduated at Harvard 
College in 1837, but without any literary distinc- 
tion. An iconoclast in literature, he seldom thanked 
colleges for their service to him, holding them in 
small esteem, whilst yet his debt to them was impor- 
tant. After leaving the University, he joined his 
brother in teaching a private school, which he soon 
renounced. His father was a manufacturer of lead- 
pencils, and Henry applied himself for a time to this 
craft, believing he could make a better pencil than 

^ Part of this paper was the Address delivered by Mr. 
Emerson at the funeral of Mr. Thoreau, in May, 1862. In 
the following summer it was enlarged and printed in the 
" Atlantic Monthly " in its present form. 



422 THOREAU. 

was then in use. After completing his experiments, 
he exhibited his work to chemists and artists in 
Boston, and having obtained their certificates to its 
excellence and to its equality with the best Lon- 
don manufacture, he returned home contented. His 
friends congratulated him that he had now opened 
his way to fortune. But he replied, that he should 
never make another pencil. " Why should I ? I 
would not do again what I have done once." He re- 
sumed his endless walks and miscellaneous studies, 
making every day some new acquaintance with 
Nature, though as yet never speaking of zoology or 
botany, since, though very studious of natural facts, 
he was incurious of technical and textual science. 

At this time, a strong, healthy youth, fresh from 
college, whilst all his companions were choosing 
their profession, or eager to begin some lucrative 
employment, it was inevitable that his thoughts 
should be exercised on the same question, and it re- 
quired rare decision to refuse all the accustomed 
paths and keep his solitary freedom at the cost of 
disappointing the natural expectations of his family 
and friends : all the more difficult that he had a 
perfect probity, was exact in securing his own inde- 
pendence, and in holding every man to the like 
duty. But Thoreau never faltered. He was a 
born protestant. He declined to give up his large 
ambition of knowledge and action for any narrow 



THOREAU. 423 

craft or profession, aiming at a much more com- 
prehensive calling, the art of living well. If he 
slighted and defied the opinions of others, it was 
only that he was more intent to reconcile his prac- 
tice with his own belief. Never idle or self-indul- 
gent, he preferred, when he wanted money, earning 
it by some piece of manual labor agreeable to him, 
as building a boat or a fence, planting, grafting, 
surveying, or other short work, to any long engage- 
ments. With his hardy habits and few wants, his 
skill in wood-craft, and his powerful arithmetic, he 
was very competent to live in any part of the world. 
It would cost him less time to supply his wants 
than another. He was therefore secure of his lei- 
sure. 

A natural skill for mensuration, growing out of 
his mathematical knowledge and his habit of ascer- 
taining the measures and distances of objects which 
interested him, the size of trees, the depth and extent 
of ponds and rivers, the height of mountains, and 
the air-line distance of his favorite summits, — this, 
and his intimate knowledge of the territory about 
Concord, made him drift into the profession of 
land-surveyor. It had the advantage for him that 
it led him continually into new and secluded 
grounds, and helped his studies of Nature. His 
accuracy and skill in this work were readily appre- 
ciated, and he found all the employment he wanted 



424 THOREAU. 

He could easily solve the problems of the sur< 
veyor, but he was daily beset with graver questions, 
which he manfully confronted. He interrogated 
every custom, and wished to settle all his practice 
on an ideal foundation. He was a protestant d, 
outrance^ and few lives contain so many renuncia- 
tions. He was bred to no profession; he never 
married ; he lived alone ; he never went to church ; 
he never voted ; he refused to pay a tax to the 
State ; he ate no flesh, he drank no wine, he never 
knew the use of tobacco ; and, though a naturalist, 
he used neither trap nor gun. He chose, wisely no 
doubt for himself, to be the bachelor of thought 
and Nature. He had no talent for wealth, and 
knew how to be poor without the least hint of 
squalor or inelegance. Perhaps he fell into his 
way of living without forecasting it much, but ap- 
proved it with later wisdom. " I am often re- 
minded," he wrote in his journal, " that if I had 
bestowed on me the wealth of Croesus, my aims 
must be still the same, and my means essentially 
the same." He had no temptations to fight against, 
— no appetites, no passions, no taste for elegant 
trifles. A fine house, dress, the manners and talk 
of highly cultivated people v/ere all thrown away on 
him. He much preferred a good Indian, and con- 
sidered these refinements as impediments to conver- 
sation, wishing to meet his companion on the sim« 



THOREAU. 



425 



plest terms. He declined invitations to dinner-par- 
ties, because there each was in every one's way, and 
he could not meet the individuals to any purpose. 
"They make their pride," he said, "in making 
their dinner cost much ; I make my pride in mak- 
ing my dinner cost little." When asked at table 
what dish he preferred, he answered, " The near- 
est." He did not like the taste of wine, and never 
had a vice in his life. He said, — " I have a faint 
recollection of pleasure derived from smoking dried 
lily-stems, before I was a man. I had commonly a 
supply of these. I have never smoked anything 
more noxious." 

He chose to be rich by making his wants few, 
and supplying them liimself. In his travels, he 
used the railroad only to get over so mucli country 
as was unimportant to the present purpose, walking 
hundreds of miles, avoiding taverns, buying a lodg- 
ing in farmers' and fishermen's houses, as cheaper, 
and more agreeable to him, and because there he 
could better find the men and the information he 

wanted. 

There was somewhat military in his nature, not 
to be subdued, always manly and able, but rarely 
tender, as if he did not feel himself except in oppo- 
sition. He wanted a fallacy to expose, a blunder 
to pillory, I may say required a little sense of vic- 
tory, a roll of the drum, to call his powers into full 



426 THOREAU. 

exercise. It cost him nothing to say No ; indeed 
he found it much easier than to say Yes. It seemed 
as if his first instinct on hearing a proposition was 
to controvert it, so impatient was he of the limita- 
tions of our daily thought. This habit, of course, 
is a little chilling to the social affections ; and 
though the companion would in the end acquit him 
of any malice or untruth, yet it mars conversation. 
Hence, no equal companion stood in affectionate re- 
lations with one so pure and guileless. " I love 
Henry," said one of his friends, " but I cannot like 
him ; and as for taking his arm, I should as soon 
think of taking the arm of an elm-tree." 

Yet, hermit and stoic as he was, he was really 
fond of sympathy, and threw himself heartily and 
childlike into the company of young people whom 
he loved, and whom he delighted to entertain, as he 
only could, with the varied and endless anecdotes 
of his experiences by field and river : and he was 
always ready to lead a huckleberry-party or a 
search for chestnuts or grapes. Talking, one day, 
of a public discourse, Henry remarked, that what- 
ever succeeded with the audience was bad. I said, 
" Who would not like to write something which aU 
can read, like Robinson Crusoe ? and who does not 
see with regret that his page is not solid with a 
right materialistic treatment, which delights every- 
body ? " Henry objected, of course, and vaunted 



THOREAU. 427 

the better lectures which reached only a few persons. 
But, at supper, a young girl, understanding that he 
was to lecture at the Lyceum, sharply asked him, 
" Whether his lecture would be a nice, interesting 
story, such as she wished to hear, or whether it was 
one of those old philosophical things that she did 
not care about." Henry turned to her, and be- 
thought himself, and, I saw, was trying to believe 
that he had matter that might fit her and her 
brother, who were to sit up and go to the lecture, 
if it was a good one for them. 

He was a speaker and actor of the truth, born 
such, and was ever running into dramatic situations 
from this cause. In any circumstance it interested 
all bystanders to know what part Henry would take, 
and what he would say ; and he did not disappoint 
expectation, but used an original judgment on each 
emergency. In 1845 he built himself a small 
framed house on the shores of Walden Pond, and 
lived there two years alone, a life of labor and study. 
This action was quite native and fit for him. No 
one who knew him would tax him with affectation. 
He was more unlike his neighbors in his thought 
than in his action. As soon as he had exhausted 
the advantages of that solitude, he abandoned it. 
In 1847, not approving some uses to which the pub- 
lic expenditure was applied, he refused to pay his 
town tax, and was put in jaiL A friend paid the 



428 THOREA U. 

tax for him, and he was released. The like annoy- 
ance was threatened the next year. But, as his 
friends paid the tax, notwithstanding his protest, I 
believe he ceased to resist. No opposition or ridi- 
cule had any weight with him. He coldly and fully 
stated his opinion without affecting to believe that 
it was the opinion of the company. It was of no 
consequence if every one present held the opposite 
opinion. On one occasion he went to the Univer- 
sity Library to procure some books. The librarian 
refused to lend them. Mr. Thoreau repaired to 
the President, who stated to him the rules and 
usages, which permitted the loan of books to resi- 
dent graduates, to clergymen who were alumni, and 
to some others resident within a circle of ten miles' 
radius from the College. Mr. Thoreau explained 
to the President that the railroad had destroyed 
the old scale of distances, — that the library was 
useless, yes, and President and College useless, on 
the terms of his rules, — that the one benefit he 
owed to the College was its library, — that, at this 
moment, not only his want of books was imperative 
but he wanted a large number of books, and as- 
sured him that he, Thoreau, and not the librarian, 
was the proper custodian of these. In short, the 
President found the petitioner so formidable, and 
the rules getting to look so ridiculous, that he ended 
by giving him a privilege which in his hands proved 
unlimited thereafter. 



THOREAU. 429 

No truer American existed than Thoreau. His 
preference of his country and condition was genuine, 
and his aversation from English and European 
manners and tastes almost reached contempt. He 
listened impatiently to news or honmots gleaned 
from London circles ; and though he tried to be 
civil, these anecdotes fatigued him. The men were 
all imitating each other, and on a small mould. 
Why can they not live as far apart as possible, and 
each be a man by himself ? What he sought was 
the most energetic nature ; and he wished to go to 
Oregon, not to London. " In every part of Great 
Britain," he wrote in his diary, " are discovered 
traces of the Romans, their funereal urns, their 
camps, their roads, their dwellings. But New Eng- 
land, at least, is not based on any Roman ruins. 
We have not to lay the foundations of our houses 
on the ashes of a former civilization." 

But, idealist as he was, standing for abolition of 
slavery, abolition of tariffs, almost for abolition of 
government, it is needless to say he found himself 
not only unrepresented in actual politics, but almost 
equally opposed to every class of reformers. Yet 
he paid the tribute of his uniform respect to the 
Anti-Slavery party. One man, whose personal ac- 
quaintance he had formed, he honored with excep- 
tional regard. Before the first friendly word had 
been spoken for Captain John Brown, he sent no- 



430 THOREAU, 

tices to most houses in Concord tbat he would speak 
in a public hall on the condition and character of 
John Brown, on Sunday evening, and invited all 
people to come. The Republican Committee, the 
Abolitionist Cormnittee, sent him word that it was 
premature and not advisable. He replied, — "I 
did not send to you for advice, but to announce 
that I am to speak." The hall was filled at an 
early hour by people of all parties, and his earnest 
eulogy of the hero was heard by all respectfully, by 
many with a sympathy that surprised themselves. 

It was said of Plotinus that he was ashamed of 
his body, and 't is very likely he had good reason 
for it, — that his body was a bad servant, and he 
had not skill in dealing with the material world, as 
happens often to men of abstract intellect. But 
Mr. Thoreau was equipped with a most adapted 
and serviceable body. He was of short stature, 
firmly built, of light complexion, with strong, seri- 
ous blue eyes, and a grave aspect, — his face cov- 
ered in the late years with a becoming beard. His 
senses were acute, his frame well-knit and hardy, 
his hands strong and skilful in the use of tools. 
And there was a wonderful fitness of body and 
mind. He could pace sixteen rods more accurately 
than another man could measure them with rod and 
chain. He could find his path in the woods at night, 
he said, better by his feet than his eyes. He could 



THOREAU. 431 

estimate the measure of a tree very well by his eye ; 
he could estimate the weight of a calf or a pig, like 
a dealer. From a box containing a bushel or more 
of loose pencils, he could take up with his hands 
fast enough just a dozen pencils at every grasp. 
He was a good swimmer, runner, skater, boatman, 
and would probably outwalk most countrymen in a 
day's journey. And the relation of body to mind 
was still finer than we have indicated. He said he 
wanted every stride his legs made. The length of 
his walk uniformly made the length of his writing. 
If shut up in the house he did not write at all. 

He had a strong common-sense, like that which 
xiose Flammock the weaver's daughter in Scott's 
romance commends in her father, as resembling a 
yardstick, which, whilst it measures dowlas and 
diaper, can equally well measure tapestry and cloth 
of gold. He had always a new resource. When 
I was planting forest trees, and had procured half 
a peck of acorns, he said that only a small portion 
of them would be sound, and proceeded to examine 
them and select the sound ones. But finding this 
took time, he said, " I think if you put them all 
into water the good ones will sink ; " which experi- 
ment we tried with success. He could plan a gar- 
den or a house or a barn ; would have been com- 
petent to lead a " Pacific Exploring Expedition ; " 
could give judicious counsel in the gravest private 
or public affairs. 



432 THOREAU. 

He lived for the day, not cumbered and mortified 
by his memory. If he brought you yesterday a new 
proposition, he would bring you to-day another not 
less revolutionary. A very industrious man, and 
setting, like all highly organized men, a high value 
on his time, he seemed the only man of leisure in 
town, always ready for any excursion that promised 
well, or for conversation prolonged into late hours. 
His trenchant sense was never stopped by his rules 
of daily prudence, but was always up to the new oc- 
casion. He liked and used the simplest food, yet, 
when some one urged a vegetable diet, Thoreau 
thought all diets a very small matter, saying that 
" the man who shoots the buffalo lives better than 
the man who boards at the Graham House." He 
said, — " You can sleep near the railroad, and never 
be disturbed : Nature knows very well what sounds 
are worth attending to, and has made up her mind 
not to hear the railroad-whistle. But things re- 
spect the devout mind, and a mental ecstacy was 
never interrupted." He noted what repeatedly be- 
fell him, that, after receiving from a distance a 
rare plant, he would presently find the same in his 
own haunts. And those pieces of luck which hap- 
pen only to good players happened to him. One 
day, walking with a stranger, who inquired where 
Indian arrow-heads could be found, he replied, 
" Everywhere," and, stooping forward, picked oua 



THOREAU. 433 

on the instant from the ground. At Mount Wash- 
ington, in Tuckerman's Ravine, Thoreau had a bad 
fall, and sprained his foot. As he was in the act 
of getting up from his fall, he saw for the first time 
the leaves of the Arnica mollis. 

His robust common sense, armed with stout hands, 
keen perceptions and strong will, cannot yet account 
for the superiority which shone in his simple and 
hidden life. I must add the cardinal fact, that 
there was an excellent wisdom in him, proper to a 
rare class of men, which showed him the material 
world as a means and symbol. This discovery, 
•which sometimes yields to poets a certain casual 
and interrupted light, serving for the ornament of 
their writing, was in him an unsleeping insight; 
and whatever faults or obstructions of temperament 
might cloud it, he was not disobedient to the heav- 
enly vision. In his youth, he said, one day, " The 
other world is all my art ; my pencils will draw no 
other ; my jack-knife will cut nothing else ; I do not 
use it as a means." This was the muse and genius 
that ruled his opinions, conversation, studies, work 
and course of life. This made him a searching 
judge of men. At first glance he measured his 
companion, and, though insensible to some fine 
traits of culture, could very well report his weight 
and calibre. And this made the impression of gen- 
ius which his conversation sometimes gave. 

VOL. X. 28 



434 THOREAU. 

He understood the matter in hand at a glance, 
and saw the limitations and poverty of those he 
talked with, so that nothing seemed concealed from 
such terrible eyes. I have repeatedly known young 
men of sensibilit}'' converted in a moment to the be- 
lief that this was the man they were in search of, 
the man of men, who could tell them all they 
should do. His own dealing with them was never 
affectionate, but superior, didactic, scorning their 
petty ways, — very slowly conceding, or not conced- 
ing at all, the promise of his society at their houses, 
or even at his own. " Would he not walk with 
them ? " " He did not know. There was nothing 
so important to him as his walk ; he had no walks 
to throw away on company." Visits were offered 
him from respectful parties, but he declined them. 
Admiring friends offered to carry him at their own 
cost to the Yellowstone River, — to the West Indies, 
— to South America. But though nothing could 
be more grave or considered than his refusals, 
they remind one, in quite new relations, of that fop 
Brummel's reply to the gentleman who offered him 
his carriage in a shower, " But where will you ride, 
then ? " — and what accusing silences, and what 
searching and irresistible speeches, battering down 
all defenses, his companions can remember ! 

Mr. Thoreau dedicated his genius with such en. 
tire love to the fields, hills and waters of his native 



'THOREAU. 435 

town, that he made them known and interestmg to 
all reading Americans, and to people over the sea. 
The river on whose banks he was born and died he 
knew from its springs to its confluence with the 
Merrimack. He had made summer and winter ob- 
servations on it for many years, and at every hour 
of the day and night. The result of the recent sur- 
vey of the Water Commissioners appointed by the 
State of Massachusetts he had reached by his pri- 
vate experiments, several years earlier. Every fact 
which occurs in the bed, on the banks, or in the air 
over it; the fishes, and their spawning and nests, 
their manners, their food ; the shad-flies which fill 
the air on a certain evening once a year, and which 
are snapped at by the fishes so ravenously that many 
of these die of repletion ; the conical heaps of small 
stones on the river-shallows, the huge nests of small 
fishes, one of which will sometimes overfill a cart ; 
the birds which frequent the stream, heron, duck, 
sheldrake, loon, osprey ; the snake, muskrat, otter, 
woodchuck and fox, on the banks ; the turtle, frog, 
hyla and cricket, which make the banks vocal, — 
were all known to him, and, as it were, townsmen 
and fellow-creatures ; so that he felt an absurdity 
or violence in any narrative of one of these by itself 
apart, and still more of its dimensions on an inch- 
rule, or in the exhibition of its skeleton, or the 
specimen of a squirrel or a bird in brandy. He 



436 THOREAU: 

liked to speak of the manners of the river, as itself 
a lawful creature, yet with exactness, and always to 
an observed fact. As he knew the river, so the 
ponds in this region. 

One of the weapons he used, more important to 
him than microscope or alcohol-receiver to other in- 
vestigators, was a whim which grew on him by in- 
dulgence, yet appeared in gravest statement, namely, 
of extolling his own town and neighborhood as the 
most favored centre for natural observation. He 
remarked that the Flora of Massachusetts embraced 
almost all the important plants of America, — most 
of the oaks, most of the willows, the best pines, the 
ash, the maple, the beech, the nuts. He returned 
Kane's " Arctic Voyage " to a friend of whom he 
had borrowed it, with the remark, that " Most of 
the phenomena noted might be observed in Con- 
cord." He seemed a little envious of the Pole, for 
the coincident sunrise and sunset, or five minutes' 
day after six months : a splendid fact, which An- 
nursnuc had never afforded him. He found red 
snow in one of his walks, and told me that he ex- 
pected to find yet the Victoria regia in Concord. 
He was the attorney of the indigenous plants, and 
owned to a preference of the weeds to the imported 
plants as of the Indian to the civilized man, and 
noticed, with pleasure, that the willow bean-poles 
of his neighbor had grown more than his beans. 



THOREAU. 437 

" See these weeds," he said, '' which have been hoed 
at by a million farmers all spring and summer, and 
yet have prevailed, and just now come out trium- 
phant over all lanes, pastures, fields and gardens, 
such is their vigor. We have insulted them with 
low names, too, — as Pigweed, Wormwood, Chick- 
weed, Shad-blossom." He says, "They have brave 
names, too, — Ambrosia, Stellaria, Amelanchier, 
Amaranth, etc." 

I think his fancy for referring everything to the 
meridian of Concord did not grow out of any ig- 
norance or depreciation of other longitudes or lati- 
tudes, but was rather a playful expression of his 
conviction of the indifferency of all places, and that 
the best place for each is where he stands. He 
expressed it once in this wise : — "I think nothing 
is to be hoped from you, if this bit of mould under 
your feet is not sweeter to you to eat than any other 
in this world, or in any world." 

The other weapon with which he conquered all 
obstacles in science was patience. He knew how 
to sit immovable, a part of the rock he rested on, 
until the bird, the reptile, the fish, which had re- 
tired from him, should come back and resume its 
habits, nay, moved by curiosity, should come to him 
and watch him. 

It was a pleasure and a privilege to walk with 
him. He knew the country like a fox or a bird, 



438 THOREAU. 

and passed through it as freely by paths of his own. 
He knew every track in the snow or on the ground, 
and what creature had taken this path before him. 
One must submit abjectly to such a guide, and the 
reward was great. Under his arm he carried an 
old music -book to press plants ; in his pocket, his 
diary and pencil, a spy-glass for birds, microscope, 
jack-knife, and twine. He wore a straw hat, stout 
shoes, strong gray trousers, to brave scrub-oaks and 
smilax, and to climb a tree for a hawk's or a squir- 
rel's nest. He waded into the pool for the water- 
plants, and his strong legs were no insignificant 
]3art of his armor. On the day I speak of he looked 
for the Menyanthes, detected it across the wide 
pool, and, on examination of the florets, decided 
that it had been in flower five days. He drew out 
of his breast-pocket his diary, and read the names 
of all the plants that should bloom on this day, 
whereof he kept account as a banker when his notes 
fall due. The Cypripedium not due till to-morrow. 
He thought that, if waked up from a trance, in 
this swamp, he could tell by the plants what time 
of the year it was within two days. The redstart 
was flying about, and presently the fine grosbeaks, 
whose brilliant scarlet " makes the rash gazer wipe 
his eye," and whose fine clear note Thoreau com- 
pared to that of a tanager which has got rid of its 
hoarseness. Presently he heard a note which he 



THOREAU. 439 

called that of the night-warbler, a bird he had 
never identified, had been in search of twelve years, 
which always, when he saw it, was in the act of 
diving down into a tree or bush, and which it was 
vain to seek ; the only bird which sings indiffer- 
ently by night and by day. I told him he must 
beware of finding and booking it, lest life should 
have nothing more to show him. He said, " What 
you seek in vain for, half your life, one day you 
come full upon, all the family at dinner. You 
seek it like a dream, and as soon as you find it you 
become its prey." 

His interest in the flower or the bird lay very 
deep in his mind, was connected with Nature, — and 
the meaning of Nature was never attempted to be 
defined by him. He would not offer a memoir of his 
observations to the Natural History Society. " Why 
should I ? To detach the description from its con- 
nections in my mind woidd make it no longer true 
or valuable to me : and they do not wish what be- 
longs to it." His power of observation seemed to 
indicate additional senses. He saw as with micro- 
scope, heard as with ear-trumpet, and his memory 
was a photographic register of all he saw and 
heard. And yet none knew better than he that it 
is not the fact that imports, but the impression or 
effect of the fact on your mind. Every fact lay in 
glory in his mind, a type of the order and beauty 
of the whole. 



440 THOREAU. 

His determination on Natural History was or- 
ganic. He confessed that he sometimes felt like a 
hound or a panther, and, if born among Indians, 
would have been a fell hunter. But, restrained by 
his Massachusetts culture, he played out the game 
in this mild form of botany and ichthyology. His 
intimacy with animals suggested what Thomas Ful- 
ler records of Butler the apiologist, that " either he 
had told the bees things or the bees had told him." 
Snakes coiled round his leg ; the fishes swam into 
his hand, and he took them out of the water ; he 
pulled the woodchuck out of its hole by the tail 
and took the foxes under his protection from the 
hunters. Our naturalist had perfect magnanimity ; 
he had no secrets : he would carry you to the her- 
on's haunt, or even to his most prized botanical 
swamp, — possibly knowing that you could never 
find it again, yet willing to take his risks. 

No college ever offered him a diploma, or a pro- 
fessor's chair ; no academy made him its corre- 
sponding secretary, its discoverer, or even its mem- 
ber. Perhaps these learned bodies feared the sat- 
ire of his presence. Yet so much knowledge of 
Nature's secret and genius few others possessed; 
none in a more large and religious synthesis. For 
not a particle of respect had he to the opinions of 
any man or body of men, but homage solely to the 
truth itself ; and as he discovered everywhere 



TIIOREAU. 441 

among doctors some leaning of courtesy, it dis« 
credited them. He grew to be revered and ad- 
mired by his townsmen, who had at first known 
him only as an oddity. The farmers who employed 
him as a surveyor soon discovered his rare accu- 
racy and skill, his knowledge of their lands, of 
trees, of birds, of Indian remains and the like, 
which enabled him to tell every farmer more than 
he knew before of his own farm ; so that he began 
to feel a little as if Mr. Thoreau had better rights 
in his land than he. They felt, too, the superiority 
of character which addressed all men with a native 
authority. 

Indian relics abound in Concord, — arrow-heads, 
stone chisels, pestles, and fragments of pottery; 
and on the river-bank, large heaps of clam-shells 
and ashes mark spots which the savages frequented. 
These, and every circumstance touching the In- 
dian, were important in his eyes. His visits to 
Maine were chiefly for love of the Indian. He had 
the satisfaction of seeing the manufacture of the 
bark-canoe, as well as of trying his hand in its man- 
agement on the rapids. He was inquisitive about 
the making of the stone arrow-head, and in his last 
days charged a youth setting out for the Rocky 
Mountains to find an Indian who could tell him 
that : " It was well worth a visit to California to 
learn it." Occasionally, a small party of PenoV 



442 THOREAU. 

scot Indians would visit Concord, and pitch their 
tents for a few weeks in summer on the river-bank. 
He failed not to make acquaintance with the best 
of them ; though he well knew that asking ques- 
tions of Indians is like catechizing beavers and rab- 
bits. In his last visit to Maine he had great satis- 
faction from Joseph Polls, an intelligent Indian of 
Oldtown, who was his guide for some weeks. 

He was equally interested in every natural fact. 
The depth of his perception found likeness of law 
throughout Nature, and I know not any genius who 
so swiftly inferred universal law from the single 
fact. He was no pedant of a department. His 
eye was open to beauty, and his ear to music. He 
found these, not in rare conditions, but wheresoever 
he went. He thought the best of music was in sin- 
gle strains ; and he found poetic suggestion in the 
humming of the telegraph-wire. 

His poetry might be bad or good ; he no doubt 
wanted a lyric facility and technical skill, but he 
had the source of poetry in his spiritual perception. 
He was a good reader and critic, and his judgment 
on poetry was to the ground of it. He could not 
be deceived as to the presence or absence of the 
poetic element in any composition, and his thirst 
for this made him negligent and perhaps scornful 
of superficial graces. He would pass by many del- 
icate rhythms, but he would have detected every 



THOREAU. 443 

live stanza or line in a volume, and knew very well 
where to find an equal poetic charm in prose. He 
was so enamored of the spiritual beauty that he 
held all actual written poems in very light esteem 
in the comparison. He admired ^schylus and 
Pindar ; but, when some one was commending them, 
he said that ^schylus and the Greeks, in describ- 
ing Apollo and Orpheus, had given no song, or no 
good one. " They ought not to have moved trees, 
but to have chanted to the gods such a hymn as 
would have sung all their old ideas out of their 
heads, and new ones in." His own verses are often 
rude and defective. The gold does not yet run 
pure, is drossy and crude. The thyme and marjo- 
ram are not yet honey. But if he want lyric fineness 
and technical merits, if he have not the poetic tem- 
perament, he never lacks the causal thought, show- 
ing that his genius was better than his talent. He 
knew the worth of the Imagination for the uplifting 
and consolation of human life, and liked to throw 
every thought into a symbol. The fact you tell is 
of no value, but only the impression. For this rea- 
son his presence was poetic, always piqued the curi- 
osity to know more deeply the secrets of his mind. 
He had many reserves, an unwillingness to exhibit 
to profane eyes what was still sacred in his own, 
and knew well how to throw a poetic veil over his 
experience. All leaders of " Waldcn " will remem- 
ber his mythical record of his disappointments : — 



444 TIIOREAU. 

" I long ago lost a hound, a bay horse and a tur- 
tle-dove, and am still on their trail. Many are the 
travellers I have spoken concerning them, describ- 
ing their tracks, and what calls they answered to. 
I have met one or two who have heard the hound, 
and the tramp of the horse, and even seen the dove 
disappear behind a cloud ; and they seemed as anx= 
ious to recover them as if they had lost them them- 
selves." ^ 

His riddles were worth the reading, and I confide 
that if at any time I do not understand the expres- 
sion, it is yet just. Such was the wealth of his 
truth that it was not worth his while to use words 
in vain. His poem entitled "Sympathy" reveals 
the tenderness under that triple steel of stoicism, 
and the intellectual subtility it could animate. His 
classic poem on " Smoke " suggests Simonides, but 
is better than any poem of Simonides. His bi- 
ography is in his verses. His habitual thought 
makes all his poetry a hymn to the Cause of causes, 
the Spirit which vivifies and controls his own : — 

" I hearing get, who had but ears, 
And sight, who had but eyes before ; 
I moments live, who lived but years, 
And truth discern, who knew but learning's lore." 

And still more in these religious lines : — 

" Now chiefly is my natal hour, 
And only now my prime oi life ; 

1 Walden : p. 20. 



Til ORE AU. 445 

I will not doubt the love untold, 
Which not my worth nor want have bought, 
Which wooed me young, and wooes me old. 
And to tliis evening hath me brought." 

Whilst he used in his writings a certain petulance 
of remark in reference to churches or churchmen, 
he was a person of a rare, tender and absolute re- 
ligion, a person incapable of any profanation, by 
act or by thought. Of course, the same isolation 
which belonged to his original thinking and living 
detached him from the social religious forms. This 
is neither to be censured nor regretted. Aristotle 
long ago explained it, when he said, " One who sur- 
passes his fellow-citizens in virtue is no longer a 
part of the city. Their law is not for him, since he 
is a law to himself." 

Thoreau was sincerity itself, and might fortify 
the convictions of prophets in the ethical laws by 
his holy living. It was an affirmative experience 
which refused to be set aside. A truth-speaker he, 
capable of the most deep and strict conversation ; a 
physician to the wounds of any soul ; a friend, know- 
ing not only the secret of friendship, but almost 
worshipped by those few persons who resorted to 
him as their confessor and prophet, and knew the 
deep value of his mind and great heart. He 
thought that without religion or devotion of some 
kind nothing great was ever accomplished : and he 



446 THOREAU. 

thought that the bigoted sectarian had better beai 
this in mind. 

His virtues, of course, sometimes ran into ex- 
tremes. It was easy to trace to the inexorable de- 
mand on all for exact truth that austerity which 
made this willing hermit more solitary even than 
he wished. Himself of a perfect probity, he re- 
quired not less of others. He had a disgust at 
crime, and no worldly success would cover it. He 
detected paltering as readily in dignified and pros- 
perous persons as in beggars, and with equal scorn. 
Such dangerous frankness was in his dealing that 
his admirers called him " that terrible Thoreau," as 
if he spoke when silent, and was still present when 
he had departed. I think the severity of his ideal 
interfered to deprive him of a healthy sufficiency of 
human society. 

The habit of a realist to find things the reverse 
of their appearance inclined him to put every state- 
ment in a paradox. A certain habit of antagonism 
defaced his earlier writings, — a trick of rhetoric 
not quite outgrown in his later, of substituting for 
the obvious word and thought its diametrical oppo- 
site. He praised wild mountains and winter for- 
ests for their domestic air, in snow and ice he would 
find sultriness, and commended the wilderness for 
resembling Rome and Paris. " It was so dry, that 
you might call it wet." 



ruoREA u. 447 

The tendency to magnify the moment, to read all 
the laws of Nature in the one object or one combi- 
nation under your eye, is of course comic to those 
who do not share the philosopher's perception of 
identity. To him there was no such thing as size. 
The pond was a small ocean ; the Atlantic, a large 
Walden Pond. He referred every minute fact to 
cosmical laws. Though he meant to be just, he 
seemed haunted by a certain chronic assumption 
that the science of the day pretended completeness, 
and he had just found out that the savans had neg- 
lected to discriminate a particular botanical variety, 
ixad failed to describe the seeds or count the sepals. 
*■' That is to say," we replied, " the blockheads were 
not born in Concord ; but who said they were ? It 
was their unspeakable misfortune to be born in 
London, or Paris, or Rome ; but, poor fellows, they 
did what they could, considering that they never 
saw Bateman's Pond, or Nine-Acre Corner, or 
Becky Stow's Swamp ; besides, what were you sent 
into the world for, but to add this observation ? " 

Had his genius been only contemplative, he had 
been fitted to his life, but with his energy and prac- 
tical ability he seemed born for great enterprise and 
for command ; and I so much regret the loss of his 
rare powers of action, that I cannot help counting 
it a fault in him that he had no ambition. Want- 
ing this, instead of engineering for all America, he 



448 THOREAU. 

was the captain of a huckleberry-party. Pounding 
beans is good to the end of pounding empires one 
of these days ; but if, at the end of years, it is still 
only beans ! 

But these foibles, real or apparent, were fast 
vanishing in the incessant gTowth of a spirit so ro- 
bust and wise, and which effaced its defeats with 
new triumphs. His study of Nature was a perpet- 
ual ornament to him, and inspired his friends with 
curiosity to see the world through his eyes, and to 
hear his adventures. They possessed every kind 
of interest. 

He had many elegancies of his own, whilst he 
scoffed at conventional elegance. Thus, he could 
not bear to hear the sound of his own steps, the 
grit of gravel ; and therefore never willingly walked 
in the road, but in the grass, on mountains and in 
woods. His senses were acute, and he remarked 
that by night every dwelling-house gives out bad 
air, like a slaughter-house. He liked the jDure f ra- 
gTance of melilot. He honored certain plants with 
special regard, and, over all, the pond-lily, — then, 
the gentian, and the Mikania scandens^ and " life- 
everlasting," and a bass-tree which he visited every 
year when it bloomed, in the middle of July. He 
thought the scent a more oracular inquisition than 
the sight, — more oracular and trustworthy. The 
scent, of course, reveals what is concealed from the 



THOREAU. 449 

other senses. By it he detected earthiness. He 
delighted m echoes, and said they were almost the 
only kind of kindred voices that he heard. He 
loved Nature so well, was so happy in her solitude, 
that he became very jealous of cities and the sad 
work which their refinements and artifices made 
mth man and his dwelling. The axe was always 
destroying his forest. "Thank God," he said, 
" they cannot cut down the clouds ! " " All kinds 
of figures are drawn on the blue ground with this 
fibrous white paint." 

I subjoin a few sentences taken from his unpub- 
lished manuscripts, not only as records of his 
thought and feeling, but for their power of descrip- 
tion and literary excellence : — 

" Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as 
when you find a trout in the milk." 

" The chub is a soft fish, and tastes like boiled 
brown paper salted." 

" The youth gets together his materials to build a 
bridge to the moon, or, perchance, a palace or tem- 
ple on the earth, and, at length the middle-aged 
man concludes to build a wood-shed with them." 

" The locust z-ing." 

" Devil's - needles zigzagging along the Nut- 
Meadow brook." 

" Sugar is not so sweet to the palate as sound to 
the healthy ear." 

VOL. X. 29 



450 TIIORKAU. 

" I put on some hemlock- boughs, and the rich 
salt cracklmg of their leaves was like mustard to 
the ear, the crackling of uncountable regiments. 
Dead trees love the fire." 

*' The bluebird carries the sky on his back." 

" The tanager flies through the green foliage as 
if it would ignite the leaves." 

" If I wish for a horse-hair for my compass-sight 
I must go to the stable ; but the hair-bird, with 
her sharp eyes, goes to the road." 

" Immortal water, alive even to the superficies." 

" Fire is the most tolerable tliird party." 

" Nature made ferns for pure leaves, to show 
what she could do in that line." 

" No tree has so fair a bole and so handsome an 
instep as the beech." 

" How did these beautiful rainbow-tints get into 
the shell of the fresh-water clam, buried in the 
mud at the bottom of our dark river ? " 

" Hard are the times when the infant's shoes are 
second-foot." 

" We are strictly confined to our men to whom 
we give liberty." 

" Nothing is so much to be feared as fear. Athe- 
ism may comparatively be popular with God him- 
self." 

" Of what significance the things you can for- 
get ? A little thought is sexton to all the world." 



THOREAU. 451 

"• How can we expect a harvest of thought who 
have not had a seed-tune of character ? " 

" Only he can be trusted with gifts who can pre- 
sent a face of bronze to expectations." 

" I ask to be melted. You can only ask of the 
metals that they be tender to the fire that melts 
them. To nought else can they be tender." 

There is a flower known to botanists, one of the 
same genus with our summer plant called " Life- 
Everlasting," a Gnaphalium like that, which grows 
on the most inaccessible cliffs of the Tyrolese 
mountains, where the chamois dare hardly venture, 
and which the hunter, tempted by its beauty, and 
by his love (for it is immensely valued by the 
Swiss maidens), climbs the cliffs to gather, and is 
sometimes found dead at the foot, with the flower 
in his hand. It is called by botanists the Gnapha- 
lium leontopodium^ but by the Swiss Edelweisse^ 
which signifies Nohle Purity. Thoreau seemed to 
me living in the hope to gather this plant, which 
belonged to him of right. The scale on which his 
studies proceeded was so large as to require lon- 
gevity, and we were the less prepared for his sud- 
den disappearance. The country knows not yet, 
or in the least part, how great a son it has lost. 
It seems an injury that he should leave in the 
midst his broken task which none else can finish, a 
kind of indignity to so noble a soul that he should 



452 THOREAU. 

depart out of Nature before yet he has been really 
shown to his peers for what he is. But he, at least, 
is content. His soul was made for the noblest so- 
ciety ; he had in a short life exhausted the capa- 
bilities of this world ; wherever there is knowledge, 
wherever there is virtue, wherever there is beauty, 
he will find a home. 



CARLYLE. 



Hold with the Maker, not the Made 
Sit with the Cause, or grim or glad. 



CARLYLE.i 



Thomas Carlyle is an immense talker, as ex- 
traordinary in his conversation as in his writing, — 
I think even more so. 

He is not mainly a scholar, like the most of my 
acquaintances, but a practical Scotchman, such as 
you would find in any saddler's or iron-dealer's 
shop, and then only accidentally and by a surpris- 
ing addition, the admirable scholar and writer he 
is. If you would know precisely how he talks, just 
suppose Hugh Whelan (the gardener) had found 
leisure enough in addition to all his daily work to 
read Plato and Shakspeare, Augustine and Calvin, 
and, remaining Hugh Whelan all the time, should 
talk scornfully of all this nonsense of books that he 
had been bothered with, and you shall have just 
the tone and talk and laughter of Carlyle. I called 
him a trip-hammer with " an ^olian attachment." 

1 From a letter written soon after Mr. Emerson's visit to 
Carlyle in 1848. Read before the Massachusetts Historical 
Society at their meeting after the death of Carlyle, February, 
1881. Published in their Proceedings, and also in " Scrib- 
ner's Magazine," May, 1881. 



456 CARLYLE. 

He has, too, the strong religious tinge you some- 
times find in burly people. That, and all his qual- 
ities, have a certain virulence, coupled though it 
be in his case with the utmost impatience of Chris- 
tendom and Jewdom and all existing presentments 
of the good old story. He talks like a very un^ 
happy man, — profoundly solitary, displeased and 
hindered by all men and things about him, and, 
biding his time, meditating how to undermine and 
explode the whole world of nonsense which tor- 
ments him. He is obviously greatly respected by 
all sorts of people, understands his own value quite 
as well as Webster, of whom his behavior some- 
times reminds me, and can see sociely on his own 
terms. 

And, though no mortal in America could pretend 
to talk with Carlyle, who is also as remarkable in 
England as the Tower of London, yet neither would 
he in any manner satisfy us (Americans), or begin 
to answer the questions which we ask. He is a very- 
national figure, and would by no means bear trans- 
plantation. They keep Carlyle as a sort of portable 
cathedral-bell, which they like to produce in com- 
panies where he is unknown, and set a-swinging, to 
the surprise and consternation of all persons, — 
bishops, courtiers, scholars, writers, — and, as in 
companies here (in England) no man is named or 
introduced, great is the effect and great the inquiry 



CARLYLE. 457 

Forstcr of Rawdon described to me a dinner at the 
iahle d'hote of some provincial hotel where he car- 
ried Carlyle, and where an Irish canon had uttered 
something. Carlyle began to talk, first to the wait- 
ers, and then to the walls, and then, lastly, unmis- 
takably to the priest, in a manner that frightened 
the whole company. 

Young men, especially those holding liberal opin- 
ions, press to sec him, but it strikes me like being 
hot to see the mathematical or Greek professor be- 
fore lliey have got their lesson. It needs something 
more than a clean shirt and reading German to visit 
Lhii. He treats them with contempt ; they profess 
freedom and he stands for slavery ; they praise re- 
publics and hc4ikes the Russian Czar ; they admire 
Cobden and free trade and he is a protectionist in 
political economy ; they wiU eat vegetables and 
drink water, and he is a Scotchman who thinks 
English national character has a jiure enthusiasm 
for beef and mutton, — describes with gusto the 
crowds of people who gaze at the sirloins in the 
dealer's shop-window, and even likes the Scotch 
night-cap ; they praise moral suasion, he goes for 
murder, money, capital punishment, r.nd other 
pretty abominations of English lav. They wish 
freedom rf the press, and he thinks the first thing 
he would do, if he got into Parliament, would be 
to turn out the reporters, and stop all manner of 



458 CARLYLE. 

mischievous speaking to Buncombe, and wind-bags. 
"In the Long Parliament," he says, "the only 
great Parliament, they sat secret and silent, grave 
as an ecumenical council, and I know not what they 
would have done to anybody that had got in there 
and attempted to tell out of doors what they did." 
They go for free institutions, for letting things 
alone, and only giving opportunity and motive to 
every man 5 he for a stringent government, that 
shows people what they must do, and makes them 
do it. " Here," he says, " the Parliament gathers 
up six millions of pounds every year to give to the 
poor, and yet the people starve. I think if they 
would give it to me, to provide the poor with labor, 
and with authority to make them work or shoot 
them, — and I to be hanged if I did not do it, — I 
could find them in plenty of Indian meal." 

He throws himself readily on the other side. If 
you urge free trade, he remembers that every la- 
borer is a monopolist. The navigation laws of Eng- 
land made its commerce. " St. John was insulted 
by the Dutch ; he came home, got the law passed 
that foreign vessels should pay high fees, and it 
cut the throat of the Dutch, and made the English 
trade." If you boast of the growth of the country, 
and show him the wonderful results of the census, 
he finds nothing so depressing as the sight of a 
great mob. He saw once, as he told me, three or 



CARLYLE. 459 

four miles of human beings, and fancied that " the 
airth was some great cheese, and these were mites." 
If a tory takes heart at his hatred of stump-oratory 
and model republics, he replies, " Yes, the idea of 
a pig-headed soldier who will obey orders, and fire 
on his own father at the command of his officer, is 
a great comfort to the aristocratic mind." It is not 
so much that Carlyle cares for this or that dogma, 
as that he likes genuineness (the source of all 
strength) in his companions. 

If a scholar goes into a camp of lumbermen or a 
gang of riggers, those men will quickly detect any 
fault of character. Nothing will pass with them 
but what is real and sound. So this man is a ham- 
mer that crushes mediocrity and pretension. He de- 
tects weakness on the instant, and touches it. He 
has a vivacious, aggressive temperament, and un- 
impressionable. The literary, the fashionable, the 
political man, each fresh from triumphs in his own 
sphere, comes eagerly to see this man, whose fun 
they have heartily enjoyed, sure of a welcome, and 
are struck with despair at the first onset. His firm, 
victorious, scoffing vituperation strikes them with 
chill and hesitation. His talk often reminds you 
of what was said of Johnson : " If his pistol missed 
fire he would knock you down with the butt-end." 

Mere intellectual partisanship wearies him; he 
detects in an instant if a man stands for any cause 



460 CARLYLE. 

to which he is not born and organically committed. 
A natural defender of anything, a lover who will 
live and die for that which he speaks for, and who 
does not care for him or for anything but his own 
business, he respects ; and the nobler this object, of 
course, the better. He hates a literary trifler, and 
if, after Guizot had been a tool of Louis Philippe 
for years, he is now to come and write essays on 
the character of Washington, on " The Beautiful," 
and on " Philosophy of History," he thinks that 
nothing. 

Great is his reverence for realities, — for all such 
traits as spring from the intrinsic nature of the ac- 
tor. He humors this into the idolatry of strength. 
A strong nature has a charm for him, previous, it 
would seem, to all inquiry whether the force be 
divine or diabolic. He preaches, as by cannonade, 
the doctrine that every noble nature was made by 
God, and contains, if savage passions, also fit checks 
and grand impulses, and, however extravagant, will 
keep its orbit and return from far. 

Nor can that decorum which is the idol of the 
Englishman, and in attaining which the English- 
man exceeds all nations, win from him any obei- 
sance. He is eaten up with indignation against 
such as desire to make a fair show in the flesh. 

Combined with this warfare on respectabilities, 
and, indeed, pointing all his satire, is the severity 



CARLYLE. 401 

of his moral sentiment. In proportion to the peals 
of laughter amid which he strips the plumes of a 
pretender and shows the lean hypocrisy to every 
vantage of ridicule, does he worship whatever en- 
thusiasm, fortitude, love, or other sign of a good 
nature is in a man. 

There is nothing deeper in his constitution than 
his humor, than the considerate, condescending 
good-nature with which he looks at every object in 
existence, as a man might look at a mouse. He 
feels that the perfection of health is sportiveness, 
and will not look grave even at dullness or tragedy. 

His guiding genius is his moral sense, his percep- 
tion of the sole importance of truth and justice ; 
but that is a truth of character, not of catechisms. 
He says, " There is properly no religion in Eng- 
land. These idle nobles at Tattersall's — there is 
no work or word of serious purpose in them ; they 
have this great lying Church ; and life is a hum- 
bug." He prefers Cambridge to Oxford, but he 
thinks Oxford and Cambridge education indurates 
the young men, as the Styx hardened Achilles, so 
that when they come forth of them, they say, " Now 
we are proof; we have gone through all the de- 
grees, and are case-hardened against the veracities 
of the Universe ; nor man nor God can penetrate 
us." 

Wellington he respects as real and honest, and 



462 CARLYLE. 

as having made up his mind, once for all, that he 
will not have to do with any kind of a lie. Edwin 
Chadwick is one of his heroes, — who proposes to 
provide every house in London with pure water, 
sixty gallons to every head, at a penny a week ; 
and in the decay and downfall of all religions, Car- 
lyle thinks that the only religious act which a man 
nowadays can securely perform is to wash himself 
well. 

Of course the new French revolution of 1848 
was the best thing he had seen, and the teaching 
this great swindler, Louis Philippe, that there is a 
God's justice in the Universe, after all, was a great 
satisfaction. Czar Nicholas was his hero ; for in 
the ignominy of Europe, when all thrones fell like 
card-houses, and no man was found with conscience 
enough to fire a gim for his crown, but every one 
ran away in a coucou, with his head shaved, through 
the Barri^re de Passy, one man remained who be- 
lieved he was put there by God Almighty to gov- 
ern his empire, and, by the help of God, had re- 
solved to stand there. 

He was very serious about the bad times ; he 
had seen this evil coming, but thought it would 
not come in his time. But now 't is coming, and 
the only good he sees in it is the visible appear- 
ance of the gods. He thinks it the only question 
for wise men, instead of art and fine fancies and 



CARLYLE. 4(33 

poetry and such things, to address themselves to 
the problem of society. This confusion is the in- 
evitable end of such falsehoods and nonsense as 
they have been embroiled with. 

Carlyle has, best of all men in England, kept 
the manly attitude in his time. He has stood for 
scholars, asking no scholar what he should say. 
Holding an honored place in the best society, he 
has stood for the people, for the Chartist, for the 
pauper, intrepidly and scornfully teaching the no- 
bles their peremptory duties. 

His errors of opinion are as nothing in compari- 
son with this merit, in my judgment. This aj^lomh 
cannot be mimicked ; it is the speaking to the heart 
of the thing. And in England, where the morgue 
of aristocracy has very slowly admitted scholars 
into society, — a very few houses only in the high 
circles being ever opened to them, — he has car- 
ried himself erect, made himself a power confessed 
by all men, and taught scholars their lofty duty. 
He never feared the face of man. 



